Keywords

Unreliable Narrator, Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, Style

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories that featured different types of unreliable narrators. These narrators were essential to Poe’s goal of teaching his audience to take more active roles in the stories. Insanity, ulterior motives, and lack of knowledge all contribute to making a narrator unreliable. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are all short stories in which Poe implemented a different unreliable narrator to show readers how to pay more attention to a story. With little guidance from Poe or the narrator, readers must put together what is true and what is not true. Whatever the form, Poe’s innovative use of several different types of unreliable narrators challenges his audience in unique ways that force readers to solve the story and find out what is real and what is not rather than passively taking in the story.