Edgar Allan Poe and Insanity Essay

One of Washington Irving’s short and most famous stories ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ has become a ghoulish characteristic yet an individual might still be unaccustomed with its idiocy (Hoffman, 425). Based on the real legend of Ichabod Crane, the story reveals how he disappeared. For that reason, the story revolves around the themes of wealth, appearances, truth, warfare, supernatural, gluttony and greed. On the other hand, 'The Tell-Tale Heart ' is a short story that has been written by Edgar Allen Poe. Within the story, Poe reveals two major themes of madness and guilt whereby the narrator unable to deal with his guilt making him confess everything to the police

In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe illustrates how obsession can quickly turn into madness and destroy its victim and those connected to them. The narrator tries to convince us that he is in full control of his thought yet he is experiencing a condition that causes him to be over sensitive. Throughout the story we can see his obsession proving his insanity. The narrator claims that he can be a bit anxious and over emotional, he is not insane. He tries to give proof this through the calmness of his tone as he tells this tale. He then explains how although he has much love for an old man who has always treated him kind, he

Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".

In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase

Edgar Allan Poe was an extraordinary author whose horror and mystery stories leave an impression on readers even today. In some of Poe’s works, the narrator’s thoughts and actions make the reader question the narrator’s sanity. Two good examples are Poe’s poem “The Raven” and his short story “The Black Cat”; there is plenty of evidence to support that both of the narrators are not completely sane. In Poe’s “The Raven” and “The Black Cat,” both narrators exhibit symptoms of mental illness, including hallucinations, illogical thinking, mood swings, and substance abuse.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe depicts a gruesome tale. His use of dark imagery and harsh words make this story an unmistakable product of the Dark Romantic period. Poe’s use of the first person narrator adds an important dimension to the story. The narrator’s thoughts are eating him alive and Poe clearly portrays this to readers by repeating words and having the narrator constantly question himself:

It can show fantasy, darkness and it is possible that the old man in the story never existed. It is the capacity of the narrator’s imagination which makes him creates the old man. It all seems that nothing that he says happens in real life. For instance, the old man eyes, heartbeat, the night, the police, and so on, are all fruits of his fantasy. The eyes could represent his psychological sin and guilt, and the old man depicts his own personality. He wants to get rid of the eyes because it has a darkness sin which does not allow him to have a good sanity. The narrator separates the old man’s personality to his eye, and in the end, he assumes by getting rid of the eyes he could still love the man and live in peace with his mental sanity. However, this strategy does not work out well and turned against him because does not only kill the eyes but also the old

Moreover, he tries to defend his sanity by explaining how wise and cautious he was as he was preparing for the murder. Every night he checked on the old man to make sure he got everything right and get ready to execute his plan. The narration lacks of a concrete explanation of the person or place to which it is addressed, which leaves much room for interpretation for the readers. What we can infer from the story is it is not addressed to the police officers since the narrator says he was successful in making them satisfied. Finally, the climax of the story comes as the revelation of the dead body hidden under the planks. Because the story is told as a memento, our estimation might be that the narrator is addressing a court official or personage who may influence over the judgment of the narrator. Therefore, the story that the narrator is telling is most accurately realized as an appeal for mercy rather than just being an appeal to be thought sane.

Edgar Allan Poe is a prominent writer who wrote many peculiar and uncanny short stories and poems. One of the stories Poe wrote, “The Tell Tale Heart,” published in 1843, is about a narrator who is paranoid about an old man’s eye, so he decides to eradicate it. Another story by Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” published in 1846, is about a narrator who seeks revenge on his friend because, in the past, he was insulted by him. Both stories contain narrators, which are mentally unstable, but the narrator’s traits, their motives for the murder, and how their guilt is exhibited differ.

Rather it is the old man’s that is so unsettling. Any time the eye looked upon him his. It is that eye by which he is consumed and that eye that sends him into madness. It pushes him to wish to never have to look upon, or be looked upon by, that eye again. His solution, in what seems a rational choice to him, is to kill the old man. With a similar precision as the Montresor took in “The Cask of Amontillado”, the man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” has devoted himself to the perfect method to dispatch the old man.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator explains how he is not mad, how cautious he is in planning a murder. A person can argue however with the narrator of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, which he is indeed mad. The anxiety the narrator experiences through out the story makes him mad, it is also the guilt that brought on more anxiety to the narrator at the end of the story. The narrator constantly speaks of how he is not mad; he constantly as the reader why would they think he is mad. “True! –nervous-very, very, dreadfully nervous. I had been and still am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 884). The narrator does not believe that he is a mad man, much less have any mental issues. In “Overview: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’” the

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” is an ingenious tale, that contains terrifyingly evocative details. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” there comes a man that committed an iniquitous crime, who constantly assures the readers that he is sane simultaneously, while proceeding to perpetrate homicide. Edgar Allan Poe applies supernatural that contains a reasonable explanation, dramatic irony, and the dangers that dwell inside a human, to reinforce the horror of the story and to uncover that humans cannot endure guilt and must eventually confess.

Edgar Allen Poe was known for his dark-romanticism writings which evoked horror in readers. Seen specifically in his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, readers are able to get into the mind of the mentally ill narrator who murders an elderly man, one whom he claimed to love. Poe created conflict in this story by having the narrator admit to loving the man and having him be his caretaker. Conflict, and the story line, is created because it makes readers question why he would commit such a heinous crime as killing and dismembering the man. Readers eventually find out that it is the elderly man’s eye that pushes the narrator to do what he does. The narrator is trying to justify his actions and prove his sanity by explaining how he observes

     In Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the storyteller tries to convince the reader that he is not mad. At the very beginning of the story, he asks, "...why will you say I am mad?" When the storyteller tells his story, it's obvious why. He attempts to tell his story in a calm manner, but occasionally jumps into a frenzied rant. Poe's story demonstrates an inner conflict; the state of madness and emotional break-down that the subconscious can inflict upon one's self.