Contradictions on the "Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allen Poe

§One contradiction that the perceptive reader catches is the following. The narrator first tells us that he spies on the old man at night. He eerily stares at the old man while he sleeps: "It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed" (Poe 291). This clearly implies that the narrator can see his future victim: "I could see …

…irrational and illogical reasons as to how one became paranoid, as it also is with how one became obsessed. The narrator of the story attempts to redeem himself by saying that he is not a madman. In explaining everything, he believes that he is in fact rational. The story, though, full of contradictions, proves that the narrator is unstable, and all the explanations in the world could not unravel the mysteries of obsession and paranoia.