'Legally Insane In Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart'

It is clear the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” is legally insane according to the criteria. Three criteria are necessary to be considered insane, and the narrator displays these prominently throughout the story, especially that he cannot tell right from wrong or distinguish fantasy from reality. Many times throughout the story, the narrator displays he does not have the ability to tell right from wrong. The narrator knows the old man has never wronged him but justifies the desire to kill him because of his vulture-like eye by confessing, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me… Whenever it [the eye] fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid

Any sane person would know it is not right to kill someone based on a feature they cannot control. After the deed of killing the man has been completed, the narrator feels proud of himself for cleaning up the dismembered body spotlessly. He describes no shame in dealing with the man’s dead body. When the narrator later decides to admit the crime to the officers, he does not do it because he feels bad about his past action but because he wants to uncover the sound he heard of the evil beating heart. He admits for his own sanity and not because he knows it is the right thing to do. In addition to not being able to tell right from wrong, he meets another criteria of not being able to distinguish fantasy from reality. The eye of the old man causes him to kill the old man. He gives it the power to scare him when in reality an eye should not make someone feel that way. As the narrator prepares to kill the old man, he thinks he can hear the man’s heartbeat getting louder: “I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me – the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man’s hour had come!” (Poe