The Tell-Tale Heart Insanity

Sanity in a man means surviving extremely stressful situations by interacting accordingly. One can say that the root of madness is the environment a man is place in. The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is in a situation where guilt can either make his sanity or brake it completely. Poe uses character and tone to show how guilt drives the narrator's descent into madness.
The narrator is completely out of control. He is “very dreadfully nervous,” (341) paranoid, and mad. He does not seem to understand the difference between the real and the unreal, which makes him murderer an innocent old man. The narrator claims that he had to kill the old man simply to be free of the power of his eye because “Object there was none. Passion

After the murder, the narrator is tortured by the beating heart ringing in his ears, even as he claims to have enjoyed it. Frequently, the narrator insists that he is not crazy; however the reader soon realizes that the fear of the “eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (342) has absorb the narrator to the point that he has become a victim to the madness.
When the police visit, the narrator feel cocky and that nothing can touch him. He believes that he has commit the perfect murder until his guilty conscience starts to bother him. He hears the old man’s heart is still beating which drives him to “I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards” (343). The heart beats builds the suspense and tension, and the narrator does not think he can bear a minute more of “those hypocritical smiles” that mock “[his] horror!”(343) The possibility of his crime being discover drive his guilt into a mental defenses break down.
Ultimately, there is no doubt that the narrator has lost his losing his mind. He begins to act more and more carelessly, finally getting of his sit and claiming: “"Villains!" I shrieked, "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! Here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!”” (p.

John Chua, multimedia associate with the National Council of Teachers of English, argues that the murder is really an act of suicide and that the protagonist and the old man are equals. Notably, the police find no evidence of an old man in the house. Is possible that the beating heart is really the sound of the narrator’s own heartbeat. As he becomes more excite, his guilt mounts, and his heartbeat seems to grow louder.
The tone of the story is paranoid and agitated. When describing the killing of the old man, the narrator is a combination of a matter-of-fact way and excitement. Throughout the whole story the narrator tries to prove his not mad but everything he does or says proves him otherwise. At one point he tells the readers that he has nothing at all against the old man but he had to stop the evil eye as if it was the most logical thing to do. The use of exclamation points and words like “Ha!” with short, choppy sentences are example of a hysterical