Constant Reader discussion

Our next story, in honor of October and Halloween, is "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe. The site provided for the story on our schedule is https://americanliterature.com/author.... However, you can also find it, along with a read aloud, on the Poe Museum site at https://poemuseum.org/the-tell-tale-h.... It was first published in 1843 and is one of Poe's best known short stories.

This is considered to be representative of Gothic fiction. I had never heard that label applied to this kind of writing. However, there is a good Wikipedia article about it if you are interested. Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are considered to be other examples

I wondered while reading if this was the first use of an unreliable narrator and, if not, how far back in time it was used. Poe gives this narrator medical instability to warn us from the beginning that we are likely not getting any accurate information.

What did you think that the old man's eye represented? Was it an "evil eye" which was thought to cause injury or bad events? Or, was it looking into the soul of the narrator?

It's been so long since I read this story and I enjoyed it. I've heard of gothic fiction because I grew up with it in the south - all the great older scary writers. In fact, I found this in Wikipedia under Southern Gothic literature -

"Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, music, film, theatre, and television that is heavily influenced by Gothic elements and set in the American South. Southern Gothic fiction highlights violence and cruelty as features of southern culture, often through characters whose place in the social order exposes them to such treatment. Common motifs include racism, gender and sexual difference, poverty and disability. Where Gothic literature depicted the intrusion of the barbaric past into the Enlightenment, Southern Gothic depicts the persistence of social trauma in the reconstructed south. The genre arose in reaction to romantic portrayals influenced by Lost Cause myths and the ideology of American exceptionalism."

I didn't really feel he was as much an unreliable narrator as him describing his journey into complete madness. And I agree with you Barbara, that the evil eye was a reflection into his murderous soul.

Although I know I've read this, probably more than once, only the major things stick. I have to be reminded again of the subtleties.

Gina, I appreciate your adding that Wikipedia bit. In some ways it can seem that gothic=noir; just very dark. And then a lot of times there is a big, creaky, old house as a character. Here the house was just there, not special or mysterious.

The clouded eye for me was like an anti-Jiminy Cricket, something urging the narrator to evil deeds. Which was, of course, a result of a very diseased mind. For the record I agree with both of you, he was an unreliable narrator because he was suffering some sort of mad self-destruction. He didn't have to keep the officers in that room; he could have wrapped up the inspection and showed them out, right?

Edgar Allan Poe is the go-to guy for teachers wanting to emphasize the point that, despite the prefix, PROtagonists are not always good guys and heroes. In fact, most of Poe's main characters are protagonists in antagonists' clothing. And yes, unreliable. But then, there are those who say that every I-driven (vs. eye-driven) narrative is unreliable, infected to some degree by the 1st-person POV. (Meaning: Unreliable is in the nearest mirror, so go ahead and take a look.)

Fun to revisit this classic!

Ken wrote: "Edgar Allan Poe is the go-to guy for teachers wanting to emphasize the point that, despite the prefix, PROtagonists are not always good guys and heroes. In fact, most of Poe's main characters are p..."

Interesting, Ken, you think that all narrators who talk with the "I" voice are unreliable because they see the story with a special POV? I guess it is true.

The narrator is describing everything as past: the plotting, the murder, the visit of the police, his increasing agitation and, ultimately, confession to the murder. All in service of trying to convince his hearer that he is not mad, but extremely clever.

It is another measure of his madness that he thinks it better to be judged sane - and on his way to a gallows - than thought mad.