Is Edgar Allan Poe the speaker of “A Tell-Tale Heart?”?
The Tell-Tale Heart Narrator First person (Central Narrator) Most Poe narrators are “unreliable” first person narrators. This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t show up when they say they will, but rather that they either can’t or won’t tell us what “really” happened. In this case, the narrator is trying to prove his sanity. One bit of proof he offers is his ability to exercise “dissimulation” (to act or speak one way to mask true feelings or intention) with the old man. So, if he’s trying to prove he’s sane, and dissimulation is a proof of sanity, doesn’t that suggest his probably using the old dissimulation on us, too? The narrator also admits that due to his intensely powerful sense of hearing, “he can hear all things in the heaven and in the earth [and] many things in hell” (1). So, he isn’t gripping reality very tightly, due in part to a sick mind, and in another part to a sick body. On occasion, he also pretends to be an omniscient narrator. He tells us how the old man feels and
