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Insanity In Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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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. One of the ways I describe him is insane.The narrator from “The Tell Tale Heart” is insane because he killed the old man due to his pale blue eye, kept hearing the heartbeat when the …show more content…

He says “ I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. (page 174)” Certainly, you can’t hear things from heaven and hell. He must be imagining the sounds, which means he’s mad. Also, he claimed to hear the heartbeat of the dead old man. “Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!--no,no! They heard!--they heard not? Almighty God!--no,no! They heard!--they suspected!--they knew!--they were making a mockery of my horror! (page 181) Although some people say that the heart was still beating, that’s not possible because he chopped off all the body parts and took the heart out which makes it no longer connected and beating. Seeing that the old man's dead, and the heart is no longer pounding, how can he hear it? Therefore, this proves the narrator's …show more content…

Firstly, he killed the old man because of his eye. Additionally , he claimed that he kept hearing the heartbeat when the old man was dead. In closing, he had no control over himself. The difference between a sane person and an insane person is how they think and act. The narrator is obviously insane since he acted easy and normal in situations that are expected to be handled differently, like the time the policemen came to question him about the noises coming out of the house. On the other hand, the narrator acted weirdly in situations that are expected be handled in a normal way, like when the policemen were in the house. He acted weirdly since he was suspecting the policemen by thinking that they might know something about the death of the old man. He thought that the policemen suspected him for the murder of the old man. Therefore, he is indeed

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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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Edgar Allen Poe’s “the tell–tale heart” is a better example of insanity because he uses comparison, questioning, and long pauses in the story to emphasize the insanity of the narrator. To begin with Edgar Allen Poe uses comparison to emphasize the narrator’s insanity by comparing the narrator’s actions or feelings to the things that normally insane people would use. The text states “His eye was like the eye of a vulture these of those terrible birds. ”(Poe 2).

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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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In·sane /inˈsān/ (adjective) in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill. No one ever expects to go insane, no one knows when they are going insane, and in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator doesn’t think he’s insane either. There is a debate on whether or not he is insane, but despite his opinion, and whoever else's, this narrator is insane, and this is proven by his lack of reason and his auditory hallucinations. Imagine killing a loved one because of a simple physical feature.

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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 narrator attempted to cover his insanity and show that he is sane with the intention to not to get suspected by the old man. The old man with the blue eye is innocent and unconscious of what the narrator is doing. In fact, nothing the narrator tells the readers about the old man fits the common definition of insanity. However, it fits the narrator 's definition perfectly as he claims “Madmen know nothing”(Poe 303). Feeling confident the narrator shows off to the readers about how flawless his plan was, his insanity is

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Edgar Allan Poe 's The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart are very similar in the way that they portray insanity. In The Black Cat the narrator was an introvert that becomes an alcoholic and becomes “insane” when he starts to not feel any emotions when he does anything, cruel or not. In The Black Cat the narrator did things that many would consider insane, such as taking a cats’ eye out or hanging the cat because you love it. The narrator, despite being an alcoholic, did things that even if you were intoxicated would make you insane to be ok with. The narrator, in a drunken stupor, took the black cats’ eye out, then afterwards, after feeling some remorse at least, decided to hang the cat because he loved it.

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One sign of the narrator being insane is that he has impulsive behavior. For example, the narrator says, “First of all, I dismembered the corpse, I cut off the head, and the arms, and the legs, or … works as well” (12). This means that he cut off the body without thinking about it beforehand. Furthermore, the narrator also says that he did not just leave the body there, but hid it too. All of this matters because it was a very sudden action

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To properly determine whether or not the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” is insane a definition of insanity must be brought to light; possible explanations for his transgression must be examined, and the scope of information that has been provided must be understood for what it is. To understand if someone is insane or not, American society must lay bare a universal definition for insanity. As a whole, society today does not shy away from using words such as insane or crazy. This careless use of words leads to the definitions becoming less clear.

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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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The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

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Ultimately it comes down to this, insane or sane? Insane would be the perfect way of describing a person being mad, killing a man for no reason, and laughing at a horrifying death. After having the narrator showing so many things to prove he is insane rather than sane is pretty clear. The author allows a visual understanding of the narrator in the “Tell Tale Heart” from having many specific details about his point of view.

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Suspense by Edgar Allen Poe Suspense is a writing style that authors use to make it so a reader is ahead of the characters in the story. Edgar Allen Poe profoundly used this technique in his story “Tell Tale Heart”. The narrator is psychotic and is particularly tormented by an old man’s ‘evil’ glass eye. He was willing to do close to anything to be rid of the eye, including murder.

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The narrator of “The Tell-tale Heart” is a madman who does not believe he is insane but continues to show otherwise during the telling of how he kills the old man to police officers. After a week of planning the murder, he still did not find satisfactory because he could still hear the beating of the old man’s heart. Also, if one is not a madman then why would one commit such a crime just because of an eye. While the narrator explains the story of how and why he commits murder, one can conclude that some details are unrealistic throughout his story. Which leads him to come off as a psychopath because of the details and the reason behind killing the old man.

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