Mental Illness In The Cask Of Amontillado, And The Raven

transitioning to novel/writing and then to thesis)
Illness plays a pivotal role in Poe’s works “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Raven” as it leads to unrighteous murder, extreme retribution, and hallucinations linked to the dead.
The occurrence of unrighteous murder is accomplished in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” because of the mental illnesses the narrators suffer, which lead them to violently kill their innocent acquaintances and oddly hide their remains. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator continually tries to convince the reader of his sanity. An instance of this is when the narrator says, “If you still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body” (Poe 83). The narrator’s claim of being sane “only amplifies his lack of sanity” (Wilson and Lazzari 346). The narrator’s lack of sanity leads him to jump into his victim’s room, kill

Similarly, in “The Cask of Amontillado,” the narrator, Monstresor, makes claims that he is sane, but Kate Stewart claims otherwise: “In their study of the revenge-tragedy motif, Charles A. and Elaine S. Hallett postulate that ‘the brutal act committed by the revenge is what distinguishes the act of revenge from the act of justice and makes void all of the protagonist’s claims to sanity.’ This statement sheds light on Monstresor’s actions; his violent act embezzles his mental condition” (82). Monstresor’s violent act of killing Fortunato and leaving him to die alone in a sealed wall where he could not be found proves that Monstresor is suffering from a mental illness, regardless of his claims to sanity. All Monstresor’s claims to sanity are invalidated by his violent act. The undiagnosed mental illnesses the narrators suffer cause them to commit unwarranted murder and disturbingly hide their victim’s