The Use of Irony in

             The use of an unreliable first-person narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" serves a number of crucial functions: .
             By telling this story from the viewpoint of a deranged major character, Poe provides us with insight into that character's motivation in committing murder as well as his purpose in relating it to the reader, justifies the "open-ended" resolution of the story's plot, and above all, intensifies the dramatic impact of his tale. (Auden 19-20) .
             Robinson believes that "The Tell-Tale Heart" could have been recounted from an alternative perspective, a third-person narrator, for example. But, had the author done this, character motivation would not have been as sharply etched as it so deeply is (15).
             Robinson feels that by using this irony the narrator creates a feeling of hysteria, and the turmoil resulting from this hysteria is what places "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the list of the greatest horror stories of all time (94). "The murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt. By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is deranged" (Thompson 53).
             Thompson reminds us that there is no clear reason why the narrator murdered the old man, knowing that he loves the old man, and that the murder of him is motiveless, and unconnected with passion or profit. It is later that it shows he is not intending to murder the man at all, but his Evil Eye (212). The old man is killed because he is considered a madman by one who is himself insane. The mad narrator justifies the murder by believing that the old man is possessed by the Evil Eye (213).
             The narrator thinks that the Evil Eye is so vexing, but in the end, a sound, the beating of the old man's heart, is what condemns the madman. Robinson believes this is ironic because it shows the guarding against one danger while being overcome by another (189-90). The narrator may have felt that the policemen were planning on making him finally admit to the crime by staying at the house for so long at such late hours.