Insanity Your Honor and Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury the caretaker in Edgar Allan Poe’s”The Tell-Tale Heart” is Insane; using the McNaughton rule proves that he should be placed in a state hospital for the criminally insane, He did not know what he was doing, He did not know that what he was doing was wrong. The caretaker is insane because the sounds he hears that causes him to go insane.
Because the old man is planning to take the old man’s life he has been super nice to him. So, maybe when the narrator goes to kill the old man he won’t suspect anything. The narrator tries to kill the old man every night, but the eye was always closed and it just didn’t seem to be so scary and irritating. The exact reason is , “and this I did for seven long nights every night just at midnight, but I found the eye closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; fro it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.” , said the narrator.
“True! --- nervous --- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” This opening quote by the unnamed narrator of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” sets the stage for following murder he commits in the story and illustrates the complex mannerism of this character. Throughout the story, this intense character displays a dynamic nature, evident in his veering from one mental state to another, which consequently shows reliability and insanity. An intense presence is evident by the unnamed murder throughout the story, exhibited through excessive emotional displays of determination, paranoia, and narcissism.
While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.
If the Narrator in this story withstood a mental health review by a psychologist, they would say that he is “mentally ill” or if reviewed by psychologist of his time, “he is demon possessed”. Furthermore they would keep him under surveillance by a caretaker or psychiatric professional. Nevertheless he is still responsible for his actions; he killed a person and took the old man’s legs, head and arms form his body, and hide him under the floorboards of his room! Only an individual with an extreme mental illness or huge a passion to gain vengeance from another person! To begin this rant of arguments, the Narrator (is not given a name in the story) shows a lot of examples to prove that he is guilty, while not even noticing it.
Insanity is a disease capable of making a person lose control of themselves. On the other hand, sanity is when a person is what others call “normal”. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe the narrator kills a man and he is confessing to the cops about it. He confesses how long the murder took and what he did each night and how he executed the murder. However, the narrator is not guilty because of the reason of insanity.
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.
He is the person with the eye that makes the narrator blood run cold from just even looking at it. He explains that he has an eye of a vulture and it haunted him day and night. In other words, the narrator loves the man but as he explains it the eye. The narrator feels since the old man’s eye haunt him he should kill him.
The old man’s evil eye drove the narrator absolutely crazy. Everyone has that one thing in the world that they just cannot tolerate, it bugs them so much that it causes them to do things that they normally wouldn’t do, especially if they are mentally unstable. Obviously by the way the narrator thought “And now my anxiety seized me…. With a loud yell I opened the lantern and leaped into the room.” He couldn’t control himself and let his emotions get the best of him.
To begin with, the theme of insanity is present throughout Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In the beginning of the short story, the narrator begins by saying “True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad” (Poe 440). He began trying to give reasoning for his actions, hinting to readers that he had previously committed a horrific act. The narrator realized he had every reason to care and love the old man for “he never wronged me… never given me an insult” (Poe 440) but instead of feeling compassionate, he had an insane desire to kill the old man. He questioned why he would want to inflict harm onto someone he had no bitterness towards and comes up with an explanation.
Someone who is truly insane does not want to believe that they are, in the slightest way, crazy at all. The definition of insane implies that your mind has no control over one’s behavior, one lacks the ability to think rationally, or one has the inability of normal social interaction. These abnormal behaviors are commonly characterized by madness. The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” shows many different signs of having a mental illness. As the story progresses, a reader will begin to question and grow concern of whether or not the narrator should be the one telling the story of what went on in that household.
The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will be defending that the accused individual is legally insane, and that because of this, he wasn’t fully aware of his actions and therefore can’t be held accountable for his activities during the time of the murder. He is guilty of murdering an old man, the murder was caused by his insanity and because of this I will be extricating the narrator from this situation. The anonymous narrator is legally insane because he couldn’t distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality. He was subject to uncontrollable, impulsive behavior, and was unable to tell right from wrong during the murder. The first, and perhaps most obvious, symptom of mental illness exhibited by the narrator is nervousness.
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist insists that he is not mad. But in the end, the reader can infer that the protagonist is mad. Obviously, Poe implies the protagonist’s insanity along the story. What technique does Poe use to convince the reader? How would the reader know the protagonist’s instability?
Unsoundness Of Mind.. Insanity is defined in many ways. It’s all up to the person and their point of view. The actual definition of insanity is “a 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 or injury.” (via http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=979) The narrator from the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” is a lot of things.
