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Tone
Manuscript Found in a Bottle
Explanation and Analysis—A Crude Imagination:
“Manuscript Found in a Bottle” begins with Poe’s unnamed narrator indirectly revealing his own lack of trustworthiness to the reader:
I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. [...] Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.
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Ligeia
Explanation and Analysis—A Vivid Imagination:
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 short story “Ligeia” is told from the perspective of the titular character’s former lover, whose grief and opium-addled mind slowly turns more and more insane, thereby rendering him an unreliable narrator. The longer he grieves for Ligeia, the more he begins to see her everywhere he turns:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow—a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect—such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena.”
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William Wilson
Explanation and Analysis—Let Me Call Myself:
The narrator’s self-introduction at the start of “William Wilson” establishes his status as an unreliable narrator and foreshadows his tragic end:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn—for the horror—for the detestation of my race.
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The Tell-Tale Heart
Explanation and Analysis—How, Then, am I Mad?:
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is written in the past-tense from the first-person point of view of its unnamed narrator, and from the very first line, Poe makes it clear that this narrator is extremely unreliable:
Unlock with LitCharts A+True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
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The Black Cat
Explanation and Analysis—Mere Household Events:
“The Black Cat,” published in 1843, opens with the narrator providing a self-introduction full of heavy foreshadowing, as well as unintentional hints that his trustworthiness may not be the most reliable:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.
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