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).
Insanity Your Honor and Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury the caretaker in Edgar Allan Poe’s”The Tell-Tale Heart” is Insane; using the McNaughton rule proves that he should be placed in a state hospital for the criminally insane, He did not know what he was doing, He did not know that what he was doing was wrong. The caretaker is insane because the sounds he hears that causes him to go insane.
While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.
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.
In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator's obsession with the old man's eye serves as a symbol for the narrator's guilt and insanity. The eye, with its pale blue color and film over it, represents the narrator's conscience, which haunts and torments them. The narrator's fixation on the eye is a clear indication of their mental instability. They describe the eye as "evil" and "vulture-like," indicating that it has taken on a monstrous quality in their mind.
Mental illnesses can take over a person’s brain; leading them to do bad things. In the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, a man killed his boss because of his appearance. An older gentleman had a cataract over his right eye. His worker that stayed in the house with him was believed to have had a mental issue, because the eye would bother him. Many people believe that this particular short story is not appropriate for the middle school age group.
The hallucinations of the narrator weren’t even possible to happen. “While hallucinations can involve any of five senses, auditory hallucinations (e.g. hearing voices or some other sound) are most common in schizophrenia. This statement declares that in their mind they hear sounds in their head that make them believe that it is real even if there is no possible way it can (Schizophrenia 2). “ It was a low, dull quick sound-- much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton….It is the beating of his hideous heart!”.
Firstly, he killed the old man because of his eye. Additionally , he claimed that he kept hearing the heartbeat when the old man was dead. In closing, he had no control over himself. The difference between a sane person and an insane person is how they think and act. The narrator is obviously insane since he acted easy and normal in situations that are expected to be handled differently, like the time the policemen came to question him about the noises coming out of the house.
Edgar Allan Poe, a man who has changed literature through his numerous pieces of writing, such as The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher. In Edgar Allan Poe’s famous work, The Raven, the main character is confronted with a raven. The character speaks to the raven, thinking it couldn’t respond, but the raven did respond, but only speaking one word, “Nevermore” (Poe 331). In some cases of mental illnesses, one can experience hallucinations, hearing voices, paranoia, and even persecutory delusion. Is it possible that the Raven could have symbolized something other than a bird.
The Psychology of Madness as seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories (name in progress). Edgar Allan Poe was an author truly ahead of his time. The characters in his short stories, dismissed as mad at the time by his audience, have symptoms of mental illnesses and disorders that had not been labeled until at least one hundred years later. Arguably Poe’s well-known short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, features a narrator showcasing symptoms of illnesses like schizophrenia. This narrator shows signs of auditory and visual hallucinations, and delusions.
Around 1.5 to 3.5 percent of people in the world experience traits of psychosis (Calabrese). This behavior is observed in one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most interesting stories. “The Black Cat,” by Poe, has a narrator who exhibits clear signs of psychosis, though, the narrator continuously claims he is not ill and what happened was entirely normal. This makes for an interesting debate if he truly is insane or not. Despite the narrator’s argument that murder was the simple result of cause and effect, Poe makes it clear in his writing that he is insane.
““There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness.” (Jamison). With the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, most of his characters are very expressive of how they perceive themselves. Many of these characters see themselves as perfectly normal or sane. This can be seen by the characters justifying their actions or automatically mentioning how they are not mad.
There are many mental illnesses that would lead to insane behaviors ranging from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder to Schizophrenia. While it is difficult for the average person diagnose mental disorders from such a short story, the narrator likely has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. The care he takes in every aspect of his nightly stalking show the telltale characteristic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: “And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it- oh so gently!”
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.
The story “ The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe was told in first person, which was the killer in this story. He lived near an old man that he adored but had a problem with one thing, which was the old man’s eye. His eye was a pale blue and had a film like contact over his eye that bothered the narrator or the killer in this story. This eye bothered him because as he put it was that it was almost like the eye could see through him and see his soul. In the end the narrator ended up killing the old man.
