In Edgar Allan Poe's classic work, "The Tell-Tale Heart," we meet an anonymous, neutral narrator who presents a tale of madness to the first person. I suspect this ambiguity with gender was intentional on Poe's part in order to avoid any preconceived notions about the motivations the narrator might have. For my purposes, I will assume that the narrator is male. This narrator lives with an old man for whom he claims to have true love and respect. However, it quickly becomes alarming that the narrator is crazy. The following is my analytical examination of this character's mental state. (Poe) The first clue that something is wrong with our narrator is when he relates that he suffered from an illness which unfolds without further elaboration. Although he does not mention any specific ill effects of this illness, he states that "the illness had heightened my senses" and that "above all, the sense of hearing was acute." This enhanced hearing will play a crucial role later in the story, but is also a point of contradiction. Then he tells us that he “can’t say how the idea got into my brain.” However it happened, he is clearly consumed by it. He confirms this when he talks about how it “haunted” him “day and night.” I suggest that this preoccupation is a mental defect since it obstructs normal cognitive harmony. What I think is one of the strongest proofs of his madness is when he admits to loving the old man who "never hurt him", but he becomes obsessed with eliminating one of the man's eyes. It seems to me that the old man has a cataract or some other eye condition that gives him a pale blue color. Our narrator is so distressed by the gaze of this single eye that his "blood ran cold" each time he came upon...... in the middle of a paper ......e like a villain when he confesses. This suggests to me that he is incapable of seeing his own actions as wrong. Instead, he seems to feel that the world is picking on him. The old man's eye, the police, the neighbor who reported the noise, all in his mind are conspiring against him. (Poe) In summary, there is plenty of evidence to show that the narrator has gone mad in this story. Much of this has to do with the dichotomy between love and hate, reality and illusion. We see that the narrator has difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imagined. His mental state cannot logically be considered healthy by any objective means. At several points in the story, he displays his lack of connection with reality. He continually references his mental health while acting on thoughts that are clearly not bound by normal standards of mental acuity..