The Edging Tales of a Heart by Hannah Wade

The way he boasts of his cunning preparations is evident when he exhorts the reader: “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded –with what caution –with what foresight –with what dissimulation I went to work!” The perseverance shown by the narrator in the execution of his plans, the way he dismembered the corpse into various parts by cutting away the arms and the legs, how he keeps away even a single blood stain from the pot and the way he receives the policemen quite innocently suggest that he was conscious of what he was doing. Bloom’s Bio Critiques: Edgar Allan Poe) The narrator tries to convince the listeners that he is quite sane and he wants to show that he is even cleverer than others by taking all the necessary precautions to cover up his cruel deed.

As Ruffner, Courtney J., Jeff Grieneisen, and Harold Bloom(2002) rightly puts it: “Poe uses rhetorical disclaimers to confuse this idea of insanity, and, in turn, manages to trick his readers into trusting the narrators” and even though the narrator in the tale tries to manipulate “the reader into trusting him, the pattern of insanity prevails throughout this tale”.( Intelligence: Genius or Insanity? Tracing Motifs in Poe’s Madness Tales. Poe makes every effort in the story to present his narrator sane, credulous and as an intelligent genius. They identify that “Poe considered madness a purely intellectual entanglement”. Ruffner, Courtney J., Jeff Grieneisen, and Harold Bloom(2002) deals in detail with the insanity of the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart”. He tries to restate that he is normal by boasting that he can tell a story so ‘calmly’ and ‘stealthily’. For him, the malady has only “sharpened (his) senses –not destroyed –not dulled them”. The narrator in the opening paragraph makes it very clear that the fact that he is nervous should not be taken for being mad or insane. The repetitive outbursts of the narrator throughout the story regarding his sanity make the reader to question his sanity.

The Edging Tales of a Heart by Hannah Wade