Mentally Insane In A Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

"As many as 5% of people display psychopathic or sociopathic personality disorders," (Mann, 1). While this quote might shock most, if not all people, it supports the claim that everyone knows at least one person who shows these tendencies. The narrator from "A Tell Tale Heart" is in this five percent, meaning that he shows either psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies. which adds to the fact of him being mentally ill.

While this might seem petty, a normal, sane person, would not tell about how a disease helps them, or how the disease has, instead of hurt them, improved them. The reason the previous statement helps to prove that the Narrator is mentally ill is because he believes this. In "A Tell Tale Heart" Edgar Allen Poe writes, "This disease has sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them,"(Poe, 1). Upon writing this, Poe shows how the narrator is mentally insane, also known as a psychopath, by describing how he, the narrator, believes that the illness he has helps him more then it hurts him.

The reason why this would prove that the narrator is insane is because if he were mentally stable, he would not be imagining, or hallucinating, the beat of the old man's heart. To support his the text states, "I found the noise was not within my ear...and yet the officers heard not,"(Poe, 7). When Poe writes this, he is showing that the narrator is insane because he is the only one, out of the three in the room, who is able to hear the heartbeat of the old mans