Narration Interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's Works

Unit 3: Point of View & Theme
In the opening lines of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart,” the narrator—who has just carried out a cold-blooded murder—sets out to convince readers that he is not a madman: “True! –nervous –very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”
But the narrator’s effort to convince the reader only reinforce his madness, highlighting how he is sinking into unhealthy and illogical thought. By telling this story in the first-person point of view, Poe succeeds in something equally important: He is able to illustrate—firsthand—a man’s descent into madness, and in doing so, he satisfies the human desire to understand the of the human mind.
Point of view is important because it influences the way we read a text. Narrators determine what we know and how we see it. Point of view is not assigned at random; authors choose a particular style of narration for that particular story. The two most commonly used points of views are first and third person narration.
First-Person Narration
“I walked up the steps, and my head felt heavy.”
“We walked up the steps, and our heads felt heavy.”
In first-person narration, the narrator is a participant in the action of the story. They explain the actions of the story from the “I” perspective. Rarely, like in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the first-person narration uses the mysterious “we” perspective. Because these first-person narrators are actively involved in the events of the story, some first-person narrators are unreliable. Their “stake” in the story prevents them from having an unbiased perspective. Or, in some cases, the narrator doesn’t know everything going on in the story, so they can’t present a clear and full view of the events. Take, for instance, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” whose deteriorating mental state eventually prevents her from wholly understanding what is happening to her.
Second-Person Narration
“You walked up the steps, and your head felt heavy.”
Second-person uses the pronoun “you” – this is a less commonly used point of view for writers. When it is used, second person is sometimes addresses the reader, sometimes represents a character writing or imagining speaking to another person, or sometimes it’s the character talking to themselves.
Third-Person Narration
“They walked up the steps, and their head felt heavy.”
“Marjorie walked up the steps, and her head felt heavy.”
Third-person narrators are generally more reliable than first-person narrators because they are not characters in the story. They’re another persona telling you the story. Some third-person narrators know everything about all of the characters’ lives – this is called an Omniscient Narrator (Omniscient means seeing/knowing all, sometimes related to a God-like figure). Other third-person narrators can only reveal the thoughts and feelings of some of the characters.
What each of the texts in this unit share is a distorted perspective. Ma...