Obsession In The Tell-Tale Heart And Berenice

Obsession in simple terms it is the act of being obsessed with someone or something; to be unable to control an idea or thought that continually runs through and consumes the mind. There are many types of obsession as well as different levels, however, in the short stories The tell-tale heart and Berenice it is clearly apparent that both narrators suffer from a severe monomania, more specifically of facial attributes. The narrator of this tale, Egaeus, is a scholarly young man who grows up in a large gloomy mansion with his cousin Berenice. He suffers from a type of obsessive disorder, a disease that makes him fixate on objects. She, in the beginning beautiful, suffers from some undetermined degenerative illness, with periods of catalepsy, which he calls a trance. Nevertheless, they are due to be married. One afternoon, Egaeus sees Berenice as he sits in the library. When she smiles, he focuses on her teeth. His obsession grips him, and for days he drifts in and out of awareness, constantly thinking about the teeth. He imagines himself holding the teeth and turning them over to examine them from all angles.

I saw them now even more unequivocally than I had beheld them. The teeth! —the teeth! —they were here, and there, and everywhere and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for teeth. For these I longed with a frenzied desire.” (Kennedy,