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. Even after reading the entire short story, one can only obtain a few facts about the narrator. Can anyone trust him to give the whole story of what happened that night? The narrator is not a good source of information because he is admittedly sick, he enjoys murdering, and he …show more content…
In the short story, Poe states, “I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done” (11). While the narrator is taking the life of the old man he smiles and is not fazed by what he is doing. In the narrators mind he is doing nothing but getting rid of a nuisance like he would a mouse. In the short story, Poe writes, “In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own sear upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim” (15). By saying this, he expresses that the murder and the fact that he could get away with it, is more an accomplishment or victory rather than a bad deed. In a sense the narrator saw it as more of a game of cat and mouse rather than taking another human being’s