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Insanity In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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In the legal world, a nondescript defense that the defense might utilize is insanity. Legal Insanity is arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic or persistent psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. In many pieces of literature, the narrator or protagonist being insane based on their rhetoric can be debatable such as The “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. By scrutinizing Insanity, one can better fathom why the narrator is insane and not legally responsible because of mens rea, actus rea, and control. Mens rea is the guilty mind of the defendant, meaning the defendant has the intent to commit the crime. While scrutinizing the narrator’s diction (the author’s word choice) within the poem, she is not insane …show more content…

And now a new anxiety seized me -- the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! Here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!”. Due to the narrators anxiety it made her commit the crime and while it has been established that she is mentally ill, in this state it only incites her anxiety and pushed her to commit this crime. Now some people may incorrectly believe that she is not insane and deserves juvenile punishment. They may believe this because the narrator did know what she was doing, “with what dissimulation, I went to work” . However, this is simply not the case because the narrator did not have mens rea and in order to have actus rea, mens rea is required. To prove this, “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!”. The narrator was thinking while she had the illness that controlled her. With the scrutinization of Insanity, it has been fathomed why the narrator is insane and not legally responsible because of mens rea, actus rea, and control. Only an insane person hears a ringing that nobody else can

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There is also an inclination to believe that if he had not suffered from this state, then the offence would not have been committed, specially not in the barbaric way it was done. Thus, it cannot be concluded that the accused willfully preformed the act, nor that the mens rea and the actus reus coincided while he was not in a psychotic state. (Roach, 113) Related to this finding is another element that supports the verdict of the Honorable Judge, which is the Principle of Fundamental Justice that states that no one should be “punished for morally involuntary actions.” (Roach, 82) A person who successfully raises the mental disorder defence is considered to be morally innocent of the act because they were not acting freely, in this case, free from psychotic ideations.

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In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator should not be guilty by reason of insanity. “Insanity Defense” states that a man is innocent by means of insanity if he has committed the crime because he is “unable to control his impulses” as a result of mental disease (“Insanity Defense” 1). Similarly, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” viewed the old man’s “pale blue eye, with a film over it” with hatred (Poe 1). When the old man’s eye looked upon the narrator, he would uncontrollably increase in fury and anger. This led the narrator to “[make] up [his] mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid [him]self of the eye forever” (Poe 1).

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- it is the beating of the hideous heart.’” This shows that the man believed that he was hearing the beating heart of an already dead man. Since, this is obviously not true, this proves that the murderer does indeed have mental disease. This would be a very vital piece of information if this case were to go to trial. The fact that this man has a mental disease would save him from being eligible from the death penalty.

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(66). The criminal is aware that he murdered someone, yet shows no remorse. A person who is criminally insane does not understand the effects and consequences of their actions, and therefore cannot take responsibility for them. The murderer also hides his wrongdoings from the police. If he were criminally insane, he would not have to lie about his actions.

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“It was discovered that one psychiatrist, Park Dietz, had given testimony that turned out to be untrue. He had claimed that Yates got her idea to drown the children from an episode of Law and Order. It turned out that he had confused the plots of multiple episodes” (Andrea Yates, 2021). It was during this trial that Andrea Yates was found not guilty by the reason of insanity and was sent to a maximum-security state mental facility. The M'Naghten Rule, which states “all defendants are presumed to be sane unless they can prove that–at the time of committing the criminal act–the defendant’s state of mind caused them to (1) not know what they were doing when they committed said act, or (2) that they knew what they were doing, but did not know that it was wrong”

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This dialogue directly shows how the narrator, with a mental illness that confines her logic, imagined many women “creeping” around her private front

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Yes, taking these precautions was sane of him, but stalking, murdering, and hallucinating are all traits that lead towards being insane. In the end, the narrator did prove to be insane, with his reasonless murder, and absurd hallucinations. But all in all, even if the evidence does lead to the narrator being insane, as Poe once said, “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our

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What exactly defines one as “insane” versus “sane”, and where is the boundary between the two? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores exactly that: the short story initially seems to be a tale of a 19th century woman forced into the notorious rest cure popularized at the time by male doctors--however, as the plot progresses, it becomes a much deeper commentary not only on societal limitations imposed on women, but also on the blurred line separating sanity from insanity. Gilman explores the boundary between sanity and insanity with the usage of different literary elements; she expresses how the boundary is “paper-thin” through the usage of symbolism, shows the subtle conversion to insanity by utilizing a stream of consciousness

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He refers to himself as Death, implying he has all knowledge and power over the old man. The reader becomes filled with dread as the man patiently waits to kill. The imagery portrayed in “The Tell-tale Heart” increases the demented tone that the narrator projects as the main character waits to strangle the old man. Every night, for a week, the murderer would “look in” upon the victim as he slept.

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The governess is clearly insane because her behavior shows the symptoms of someone who is a paranoid schizophrenic. A paranoid schizophrenic is one whose mind is not intact with reality and thinks someone or something is out to get them. On the governess’ first night in Bly, she believes she recognizes “the cry of a child” and the sound of its “light footstep” (James 8). Here, the governess is experiencing and auditory hallucination. Auditory hallucinations are a common symptom of schizophrenia, which is a form of insanity.

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Insanity is not a valid defense for one main reason. You are either crazy or you are not. In the end, Mack Herring was acquitted for murder. He felt as if he was pressured into doing it and he also thought he was helping her by committing the crime.

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“Insanity: n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” (Hill). This definition describes the narrator, a sweet yet deadly man, of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe seamlessly. (Appositive) A few prominent characteristics demonstrate the narrator’s insanity, and those include his motives, his actions, and his thoughts.

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“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ( Voltaire) This quote helps explain the main idea of The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe , a story about a narrator who is the caregiver of the old man who explains his reasons and his exact ways for killing the old man he was taking care of. Out of spite for the victims vulture-like cataract eye, he plots this plan to kill for weeks to rid of the eye. He finally succeeds until a nosy neighbor foils the scheme. These are 3 reasons why the narrator is guilty of murder.

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882 Words | 4 Pages

Readers may question Poe’s choice of a mentally unstable narrator. Though the narrator is clearly proven mad, his descriptions intensify the story greatly. It gives the tale purpose and proposes a captivating plot. A narrator: it is now made debatable if readers will ever have entire trust in another after Edgar Allan Poe’s remarkable

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The book’s definition of insanity refers to “the legal concept referring to the criminal’s state of mind at the time of the crime was committed. It requires that, due to a mental illness, a defendant lacks moral responsibility and culpability for the crime, and therefore should not be punished” (Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. Forensic and legal psychology: Psychological science applied to law) There where overwhelming cases about defendant that tried to use the insanity defense. The role that the insanity defense played in conjunction with psychology was that the psychologist would have to choose diverse ways of stating that a defendant was insane. A long with providing expert testimony at trail or competence hearings the psychologists would inform

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