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Theme Of Insanity In The Tell Tale Heart

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Jay Prather Matthiessen ELA 08 - Period 1 06 March 2023 Guilty by Reason of Insanity While reading the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the reader may have wondered about whether the murderer is guilty of murder by reason of insanity, or if he is guilty of 1st degree murder. In this story, the main antagonist is the narrator. The narrator wants to get rid of his old neighbor’s eye. To do this, he decides to stalk his neighbor and sneak into his house every night to watch him sleep. One night, when he finally sees the old man’s eye, he kills him. Then he chopped up the old man and hid him in the floorboards. When the police come, he hears the deafening sound of his neighbor’s heartbeat. It gets so loud that he snaps and …show more content…

It is clear that the murderer had no motive and he was acting impulsively. The murderer did not have any plan of when to kill the old man and he watched him for 7 nights to make sure that he could see the eye. “For it was not the old man I felt so I had to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye.” (Para 7, Poe) Using the quote as evidence, you can see that the murderer had no motive other than the fact that he didn't like the old man’s eye. In case you still don’t think that the murderer only wanted to kill the eye and not the man, this next quote will prove that he does. “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I didn't want his money. I think it was his eye.His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait until an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it.” (Para 3, Poe) The quote above shows that the murderer loved the old man, but he only killed him to get rid of his eye. The murderer is criminally insane because he acts impulsively and has no motive to kill the old …show more content…

The murderer is guilty by reason of insanity because he thought that killing the neighbor's eye would not hurt the old man. “For it was not the old man I felt I had to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye.” ( Allan Poe, 65) This quote proves that the murderer is criminally insane because he thought that he needed to kill the old man’s eye, not the old man. The next quote will further prove that the murderer is criminally insane. “I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then upon the dead body and pull it to pieces. When the old man looked upon me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man.” (Allan Poe, 65) The quote proves that the murderer is guilty by reason of insanity because he only killed the old man to make his eye go away. The murderer is guilty of murder by reason of

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I have a suspicion that the death was planned, maybe this man had something against the old man, but this suspicion cannot be proven. It is revealed in later text that late, every single night, for some of the last days of this old man’s life, this other man, the killer, crept into his room and just watched him. Watched him sleeping, watched his eye. Apparently this old man had what was described as an “evil eye.” The killer, or the other man, appeared to have some kind of infatuation with the old man’s eye, maybe he was scared, maybe he was feeling threatened, we do not know.

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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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Insanity Plea Essay: Persecution In Edgar Allan Poe’s morbid and suspenseful story, The Tell-Tale Heart, the deranged narrator is tormented by an old man’s pale blue eye. As the story progresses, he describes what led up to him killing the old man and hiding the body. The killer does admit to the crime; the question is, is he legally insane? According to USLegal.com, the legal definition of insanity can be summed up as a person, at the scene of the crime, not able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, tell right from wrong or control his/her behavior.

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Poe utilizes the symbolism of the “eye” to illustrate that insanity can be criticized from an individual's intellect. The narrator didn't have anything against the old man but he had something against his eye. In paragraph 2,”...and thus rid myself of the eye forever. ”The narrator is trying to prove his sanity but his eye is making him insane.he is explaining his whole murder that he says how can an insane person plan a murder. Also in paragraph 2, it states ,”...

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And every night he would slip away not being able to do it, why? Because the man’s eye was always closed. The whole reason for the murder was because of the man’s diseased “vulture” eye. Without the motive, the murder couldn’t happen. People suffering from insanity would blame the victim for their own crime which exactly what is happening here.

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I think it was his eye!” (Poe “Tell-Tale Heart” 2). Through this it is shown how the narrator has a lack of emotion towards the old man, but only the idea that he wants to kill him. The narrator had grown an obsession with the eye, so much so that the eye is mentioned four times in the second paragraph alone. The eye is described as, “a pale blue eye, with a film over it.

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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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Calculated Killer or Mentally Insane? In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, Anonymous, the killer, takes the life of an old man because the he does not like the old man’s eye. He claims that it looks like a vulture’s eye and it gave him goosebumps. There is plenty of evidence that shows how the Anonymous is a calculated killer.

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These two opposite feelings paint the narrator as insane, since he gets angry over such a small object as an eye. No sane person would get angry over an eye, nonetheless kill due to it. The butler says, “His eye would trouble me no more”(Poe) as if the eye was committing horrible crimes against him, but it was not; it was just existing. And when he gets rid of the eye a feeling of peace and content washes over him, knowing that the evil tainting his world is gone.

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Was this man a calculated killer, or delusional madman? What should his penalty be for his actions? The story “Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is about a man with a self-proclaimed “disease”, who decides takes another mans life. The narrator gives the motive for the killing being the eye of the old man killed. The killer for one week, stealthily watching him sleep trying to get a glimpse of the eye.

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As a result, the narrator is insane and should not be prosecuted. To start off , the eye drove the narrator to insanity, which led him to take the life of the old man, The narrator does not know right from wrong. In the story, the narrator said that “For it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye”(Poe). This quote from the passage proves that he is insane because he is deciding to kill someone over his “vulture eye”. A sane person would realize that killing someone over a eye is a silly, wrong thing

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While this may be the case, many people may think he was fully aware of what he was doing. This can be proven wrong because the narrator states, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me... I think it was his eye yes, it was this!”(2).This quote reveals that it was not the old man at all that had made him want to murder him, it was his eye that was his motivation.

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His problems may have caused him to become a killer and lose feeling for what is right and what is wrong. Also, when the killer was waiting to make his move, he heard the heart beat of the old man, and that sound repeated itself in his brain and jacked him up to kill. The narrator tried to convince the reader that he was not a mad man over and over again. After the murder he tries again to sell us his sanity: “And now have I [narrator] not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses” (Poe 305). He truly believes, with all his heart, that chopping up another human being heightened his senses and made him a better person.

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The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

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Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.

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