The truly mad man is someone that does not recognise his madness. Analyse the narrative voice of this story in light of this comment.

all the reasons for not killing the old man, he even tells us he “loved the old man” this makes the murder seem completely unjustified. The reason he finally gives for the murder backs up our idea of his mental state because he claims “it was the eye” that made him kill the old man, which is utterly idiotic. When the narrator speaks of the eye his speech begins to break up and get very jumpy “ I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!” ; similar to the way he speaks at the beginning. The exclamation marks suggest a high pitched voice. The narrator “made up” his mind to “take the life of the old man” which makes him seem completely cold-blooded because he didn’t do it in a fit of rage he thought about it and decided to do it. Our impression of the narrator is further emphasised when he describes the routine he carried out every night. Although the old man is fast asleep the narrator moves “very, very slowly” there is no ration behind this peculiar behaviour yet he thinks it is wise. The narrator deems the eye to be evil and does not realise that the old man actually has cataract. We are told that he has being doing this for eight nights, which makes us wondering if he wants to kill him why not just run and chop of his head. He “chuckled at the idea” that the old man does not know what he is doing, I find this sick and sadistic how he finds it funny how he can fool a vulnerable, half-blind, asleep, old man this makes him seem very mad because he is proud of this. We are again given an impression of the narrator being mad when his finger slips on the tin fastening of the lantern. Even though the old man springs awake in bed the narrator does not “move a muscle” “For a whole hour” there is something very inhuman about being able to not move for a whole hour. Something else very inhuman is how quiet the narrator kept; he was so quiet that he could” hear the death watches in the wall”. The old man was not the only terrified person in the room as the narrator said he knew the sound of terror well because he’s afraid. The narrator is terrified of the eye. The reference to the spider links back to when the old man first heard the noise, because the narrator kept completely still and quiet waiting for his moment to strike just like a spider does. “It was open-wide, wide open-and I grew furious as I gazed upon it”, The narrator’s speech is breaking up and his voice has gone hysterical as he begins to describe the eye again. The evidence to suggest the narrator is mad is overwhelming at this point, he thinks the beating of the heart will be heard by the neighbours. Yet he runs into the room “with a yell” which is far more obviously going to be heard by the neighbours than the muffled heartbeat of the old man. Even more overwhelming evidence is when he describes how he decapitated the body; he took “wise precautions” “ha! ha!”, his tone is calm and smooth flowing he even laughs; very unlike the high-pitched, jumpy voice of when he talks of the eye. When the officers come to investigate the noise the neighbours heard the narrator opens the door with a “light-heart”, how has he got a light heart just having killed someone? This makes him appear cold-blooded an heartless, he has just killed a defenceless, old man yet he keeps calm and under-control making him seem not just mad but a slaughterer. After a while of the officers resting the narrator heard the same muffled sound like before. At this point in this point in the story we are left with out a shadow of a doubt that the narrator is mad; he tried to cover the noise by grating his chair “upon the boards” but the noise “grew louder-louder-louder!” he is petrified that the officers will find out what he has done. He thought that the officers were mocking him by not admitting tat they could hear the noise. “die!-and-now-again!” the sentence structure has all broken up again with dashes and lots of exclamation marks showing his hysteria.         Whilst given us a clear sense that the narrator is mad, Poe also portrays how the narrator believes he is not mad at the same time. One of the most obvious indications that makes us think the narrator believes is not mad is, the straight forward denial of being mad. The narrator does not know why they “will say” he is mad. The narrator also thinks that killing the old man was clever and cunning, so he thinks he cannot be mad because “Madmen know nothing”. At no point in the story does the narrator think that anything he had done could be slightly strange.         We learn the most about the narrator in the first three paragraphs. I have realised that that the further apart our perceptions grow, the narrator and I, the more I think he’s mad. As he tells of how great and clever the murder of the old man was; the more I think that he is mad and killing the old man was brutal and cold-blooded. Andrew Cannan