A tell tale heart
...omething like this did indeed transpire than it seems to take away from the “madness” of the mc slightly, though not entirely. Had the story been told from a different point of view it most likely would have came off in a completely different tone than that of which we had just read. Had the story been told from the old mans point of view we may have gotten the impression that the mc was caring and sane and given no hint that he was going to murder the old man. However, as we only have the mc point of view we must believe we are told because everything else is just supposition. Throughout the story the mc was constantly stating things like “…but why will you say that I am mad?” and “Now this is the point. You fancy me mad” almost in a last ditch effort to prove to the reader that what he was doing was legitimate and not insane. He tries hard to convince us that his madness is not madness at all but skill and patience for the act of murder he is about to commit. His decision to kill the old man based on his “vulture eye” is what tells us right from the start that he is in fact mad. As the story is being told from first person there isn’t even a guarantee that the eye is any different from a regular eye. For all we know the mc could have just made it up to justify his killing the old man. If Poe was using first person to prove to us that the mc was truly mad then he was most definitely on the right track. The greatest benefit that the story receives from being told in first person is that of the beating heart. There is no way that the sound of the heart could have been that of the old mans because simply put you can’t hear the sound of someone else’s heart from across a room. Without a doubt the sound that the mc was hearing was that of his own heart. The points when Poe decided to put in the heart added perfectly to the story. When we first “hear” the heart it is when the mc is standing in the doorway while the old man is sitting up in bed. In a...