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In the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, from whose point of view is the story being told?

The narration in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is in the first person. However, the relationship between the narrator and the old man is not clear.  Was he the old man’s son?  His servant?  Did the old man serve as a father figure?

When the police are summoned by a neighbor who heard a shriek, the narrator explains that the shriek was his own from a dream.


The narrator does claim to be a hypersensitive person. But is he?  Or does he imagine it?  Which begs another question: did the narrator kill the old man, or merely imagine that he did?


He does say that the old man knew him, but by what means is not revealed; the narrator also says he had never been as kind to the old man as he had the week before he murdered him.


The narrator mentions mad, madman, or madness seven times in this short story. He is exact and obsessive in his description of the murder, and the events and planning that led up to it.


Who is the narrator speaking with during the course of the story? This other person is not identified either.  It could be argued that the narrator is speaking with himself, or perhaps a doctor, a prison warden, a judge, or a newspaper reporter.  Poe leaves much unsaid in this short Gothic horror tale, which serves to heighten the timbre of the terror described.

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