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BallsDeep BallsDeep
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6 years ago
From what point of view is Poes story told? Why is this point of view particularly effective for The Tell-Tale Heart?
 
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6 years ago

  • The story has a first-person narrator, the man who lives with and murders the inoffensive old man. Edgar Allan Poe paid very careful attention to the technical details of his stories. He knew that craft led to effects, so he planned every detail of his stories from theme to character to point of view. As Daniel Hoffman shows in his highly personal and deeply stimulating Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (1973), The Tell-Tale Heart wouldnt be half as effective without the madman himself as its narrator. Indeed, its climax would not occur without that point-of-view choice. An omniscient narrator in this case might reveal the mysteries that give the story its power (the idea that the dead man is in fact the narrators father, as Hoffman suggests; the paranoia of the narrator would also be moot for an omniscient voice). Demonstrations of the narrators imbalance come at the very beginning of the story, and they provide the context in which we will evaluate everything else that he says and does.
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