Texts written before 1900 can seem difficult at first because of longer sentences and older vocabulary. Read slowly, look up unfamiliar words and pay attention to punctuation, which often controls meaning.
In Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator insists he is not mad, but his frantic dashes, repetition and violent plan suggest otherwise. He is an unreliable narrator.
In Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, a lonely speaker is transformed by a “crowd” of daffodils, and the memory later brings “the bliss of solitude”. Context matters: Romantic poets celebrated nature and the imagination.
Worked example
Why is Poe's narrator described as unreliable?
- He claims to be calm and sane.
- His agitated language and actions contradict this.
Answer:Because his words and actions suggest the opposite of what he claims.
Key words
- unreliable narrator
- a narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted
- Romanticism
- a movement valuing nature, feeling and imagination
- context
- the time and situation in which a text was written
New questions every time.
Common Core-referenced: RL.9-10.1, RL.9-10.4