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

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Murder is a serious crime, but if you don’t have the best mental health, is it really fair to charge? The narrator of tell-tale heart had to be mentally insane. Anyone that has the audacity to watch someone sleep every night has to have a screw loose. Not only that but he could hear the old man’s heart beat “meanwhile the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker, and louder and louder every instant. “Poe, 92. There’s another thing…. Another thing that just proves this man is crazy or in his words “mad”, the reason he had of killing the old man. He murdered the old man because he didn’t like what he called “the vulture eye”. Ok, every reason someone is killed isn’t always the best but an eye! Murder is drastic, but if you can’t control the way you feel why be sentenced. The real question is jail or mental hospital. …show more content…

The old man’s evil eye drove the narrator absolutely crazy. Everyone has that one thing in the world that they just cannot tolerate, it bugs them so much that it causes them to do things that they normally wouldn’t do, especially if they are mentally unstable. Obviously by the way the narrator thought “And now my anxiety seized me…. With a loud yell I opened the lantern and leaped into the room.” He couldn’t control himself and let his emotions get the best of him. The loud beating of the heart and the evil eye both tempted the narrator to kill the old man, even though he had already planned to… he couldn’t do as he planned because the increasing sound of the heart was too much for him to handle. I don’t think anyone could hear the beating of the heart but him, “it grew louder-louder-louder! And still the man chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it possible they heard not?-no, no! They heard!”-Poe,

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Edgar Allan Poe creates this menacing tone by the repetition and description of his senses. In the killing the narrators explains that the eye of the old man is the reason why he killed him in the first place .The description of the old man’s “eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with an film over it. Whatever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees”(1). The senses of the narrator helps to bring on the mood of menace into the story.

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The definition of Legal insanity is that at the time of the crime, the killer couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, right from wrong, and/or could not control his/her behavior. The killer in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is not legally insane. The killer is not insane because of the killer having controlled behavior when planning the murder, hiding the body because the killer knows what the killer did was wrong, and the killer acted crazy and freaked out around the police after the crime was committed. For instance, a reason the killer is not insane is the killer could control the killer’s behavior.

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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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In Edgar Allan Poe’s story the Tell Tale Heart a man decides that he has to kill the old man he lives with. Because he can no longer stand to look at the old man’s ghastly looking eye. He starts plotting his way to do this. He thinks very long and hard and wise about the decision he has just made. Tons of things could go wrong here, but all he is worried about is getting rid of the eye.

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The Tell-Tale Heart Essay (make a unique title later) Vulture eyes, horrified groaning, and death, what does this all relate to? This relates to the intriguing story of The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. This story is a successful piece of art by providing the readers with many scary ideas, such as the main lead clarifying to us (the readers) that he is sane, and that he ultimately kills an old man because of his intolerable eye. Now, what makes this story so horrifying?

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Imagine waking in the middle of the night and seeing a pair of eyes glaring at you as you lay in bed. In the story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe, the murderer stares at his victim while he is sleeping for seven nights in a row before he commits the murder. The narrator justifies his actions by claiming that the old man's eye was evil. It is also perceived that the narrator has a disease or mental illness. On the day of the murder, the madman went into the old man's room and threw his bed over him.

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The narrator’s whole reason for murdering the old man is for his eye. The narrator said, “He had the eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 89). He gave examples of how the eye looked and described the eyes color leaving the reader able to see the eye in his mind. It also creates suspense because it leaves the reader wondering why that creepy eye infuriates him so much and what the big deal over it is. He also uses vivid words to describe how the anxiety got to the narrator, “I foamed-I raved- I swore.

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In the story the narrator never hurts or messes with the old man until he sees the eye open. “I was never kinder to the old man then during the whole week before I killed him.” (Poe 388). The narrator became very angry when he sees the eye open and immediately jumps on the bed. “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him.

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The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.

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Evil is all around us and it can be hard to tell who is consumed by it and who is not. In the fictional short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is consumed by his charge’s eye, to where he devises a plan on killing the old man. The story begins when the narrator becomes a caretaker to an old man with an “odd” eye. Becoming consumed by the man’s eye, he devises a plan to kill the old man so he, the narrator, will be at peace when the deed is done. He, meaning the narrator, is a calculated killer because he had came up with a plan to kill the old man because of his eye.

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The quote in “The Tell-Tale Heart manifest that the narrator was hearing the beating of the old man’s heart which isn’t doable because he killed the old man and he is no longer breathing (Poe 4). Due to being schizophrenic the narrator has hallucinations which makes him hear and see the

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Insanity is a disease capable of making a person lose control of themselves. On the other hand, sanity is when a person is what others call “normal”. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe the narrator kills a man and he is confessing to the cops about it. He confesses how long the murder took and what he did each night and how he executed the murder. However, the narrator is not guilty because of the reason of insanity.

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928 Words | 4 Pages

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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The narrator 's sole reason for such murder is purely in his disturbed mind, as he develops an obsession with the old man 's eye and the plot unfolds from here where his insanity augments with the events of the story. Due to Poe’s illustrative language, various evidence can be presented to confirm the state of mind of the narrator, including, his obsession with the old man’s eye, his precision in committing the impeccable crime and finally the sound of the man’s beating heart solely inside his head. Perhaps it all started with the narrator’s obsession with the man’s “vulture eye” since he believes the eye of being evil, proving the insanity he is gravely trying to deny “I think it was

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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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