In Edgar Allan Poe's classic work, "The Tell-Tale Heart" we encounter an unnamed, gender-neutral narrator who presents a first-person tale of madness . I suspect that this ambiguity with genre was intentional on Poe's part so as not to allow for preconceived notions about the motivations the narrator might have. For my purposes, I'm assuming the narrator is male. This narrator lives with an old man for whom he claims to have genuine love and respect. Soon, however, it becomes alarmingly clear that the narrator is mad. What follows is my analytical analysis of this character's mental state. (Poe) The first clue that something is wrong with our narrator is when he says he has suffered from some illness that needs no further elaboration. Although he does not mention specific negative effects of this disorder, he states that "the disease had sharpened my senses" and "especially my sense of hearing was acute". This improvement in hearing will play a vital role later in the story, and yet it is also a point of contradiction. Later, he tells us that he “cannot say how the idea first entered my brain.” However it happened, he was clearly consumed by it. He confirms this when he says how it “haunted” him “day and night”. I suggest that this worry is a mental defect as it hinders normal cognitive harmony. What in my opinion is the strongest evidence of his madness is when he admits that he loves the old man who "never hurt him", but becomes obsessed with eliminating one of the man's eyes. It appears to me that the old man has a cataract or some other eye condition that makes him a pale blue color. Our narrator is so distressed by the gaze of this eye that his "blood ran cold" every time it falls on... half the paper... and like a villain when he confesses. This suggests to me that he is unable to see his own actions as evil. Instead he seems to feel that the world is angry with him. The old man's eye, the police, the neighbor who reported the noise, everyone in his mind is conspiring against him. (Poe) In summary, there is a lot of evidence to show that the narrator has gone mad in this story. A lot of it 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 be considered logically healthy by any objective means. At several points in the story he shows his lack of connection with reality. He continually references his sanity while acting on thoughts that are clearly not bound by normal standards of mental acuity.