Examples Of Schizophrenia In Edgar Allen Poe's A Tell-Tale Heart

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail. —Abraham Maslow (http://www.studymode.com/). In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, A Tell-Tale Heart. A man, John Doe kills an old man just because of the look of the old man’s glass eye. When you think insane, you think wearing your pajamas in Wal-Mart or how insane a new roller coaster could be. But, according to the evidence this man is legally insane. The definition of legally insane is 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. Insanity is distinguished from low intelligence or mental deficiency due to age

In other words, John is Schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is a severe brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior. ( Mayoclinic.org). Schizophrenia is displayed when John says “Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased.” ( Pg 205 Poe) This can be interpreted as him seeing the heart tattoo growing larger and larger as he stares at it. His experience with the heart tattoo is a hallucination, a symptom of Schizophrenia. As well as when John speaks of “ It was a low, dull, quick sound much such a sound a watch makes enveloped in cotton.” (Poe 207). The sound John hears is a heartbeat and when he describes it, he describes it as “It is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe 207). Which explains that he hears it as the old man’s heart. In that case he is being delusional, another symptom of

The evidence states that he doesn’t know how or why he hates the old man’s eye, he says “It is impossible to say how the idea first entered my brain; but once conceived it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. (Poe 203). When he says that he didn’t know how he knew that he hated the old man means that during the murder he was confused on why he is killing him. That brings us back to him being Schizophrenic, usually when someone is confused about their feelings towards someone it means they are just plain confused. Since John is Schizophrenic being confused about their feelings towards someone and then murdering them can mean other things. A symptom of the disorder is delusions, a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs.(merriam-webster.com). When he says he doesn’t understand his hatred for the old man and then he kills him is a delusion in his case. People who experience delusions usually hear things that tell them to hate certain people or kill those people. John is in a state where this may occur, so when he explains his confusion and him just knowing, it then becomes a symptom of