“The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allan Poe, tells the story of how a man narrates the

events of a crime he committed to a police officer. His crime involved killing and dismembering
an old man, who he took care of. The story is told completely from the first-person point of view.
By having the insane man narrate the story, we as the readers understand that he is mentally ill.
This inspires a feeling of empathy towards the man. While this doesn’t make his actions
excusable, we understand that the narrator is not evil, but how could different points of view
change the way we feel towards this character? The story has no real antagonist since the
conflict is mainly internal. However, if the story were to be told from the point of view of the old
man, then the story would change from an insight into the mind of a madman to a story about
betrayal, and the insane man would change from a tragic character to an evil one. This would
also alter the way we feel towards the protagonist. We would no longer feel empathetic, we
would feel disgusted and scared of him. Exploring different points of view is a fun

the man was very ill. Anybody that did not do this extra research, however, would see him as an
evil being. To feel sorry for someone like him would be outrageous. How ironic that, in trying to
rid the world of an evil entity, the insane man ended up being evil incarnate in everyone else’s
eyes.