Examples Of Insanity In Gothic Literature

Edgar Allan Poe uses mood within “The Tell-Tale Heart” to show that death causes remorse and that the human heart can’t handle guilt. The mood within the story varies throughout the piece. The author has the mood start suspenseful by having the murderer peer towards the old man every night at

Over 18.2% of the adult American population has been clinically diagnosed as insane. Insanity Is a large concept to understand. It can make anyone diagnosed do things that their full body is not aware of. It can also get people out of certain situations like a court case. In court if one are diagnosed as insane, one would get sent to a mental asylum instead of a prison. This way the person diagnosed can be taken care of. In the recent case of the slenderman stabbing, that has lasted four years, Anissa Weier was sentenced to an asylum instead of being sentenced to prison, for she was diagnosed insane. If Mary Moloney was in court for the murder of her husband, she would be in a mental institution. In lamb to the slaughter, by Roald Dahl, Mary Moloney over reacts and kills her husband using a frozen leg of lamb. Mary had killed Patrick, her husband, because she had received bad news, but the audience does not know what the news is. In Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney portrays insanity because she overreacted and killed her husband, Talked to herself and laughed at her husband’s death and changed moods in the blink of an eye.

Gothic writers are well known for their works that induce grotesque and demented images to enter a reader’s brain. However, blood and gore is not the only way that Gothic writers can make your skin crawl, and the hair on the back of your neck rise. Gothic literary works contain themes of supernatural occurrences, and entrapment to induce feelings of fear, and mystery into the reader.

“True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe). In “Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe illustrates that the narrator has an acute need of the old man’s vulture eye and eventually murders the man on the eighth night. The author highlights the events of the murder and soon, the narrator confesses to the police of his guilt. As Edgar Allan Poe fabricates this short story, he enthralls the readers by giving the events specific detail. If Edgar Allan Poe were to ever continue the story where the narrator would be put on trial, he would be guilty of premeditated murder. The reason for this is because the narrator cunningly planned the murder, had a motive of killing the old man, and

Madness, delusion, lunacy. As I know it, madness is losing your grip on what reality is, the inability to perceive life as it is. To the artist, madness is the most creative lenses that a work can be shown in. Edgar Allen Poe was quite well versed in this realm, as many of his works have dealt with this subject. In two of his works, “The Raven” and “The Telltale Heart”, the unreliable narrator seems to be devolving into insanity and paranoia in both works.

Insanity does not mean someone is a babbling idiot incapable of coherent thought, but there is a “’reasonableness in lunacy’, that [the] thoughts [of the insane] are coherent and ought to be heeded” (Porter 160). Montresor’s excruciatingly detailed plan for Fortunato’s fate demonstrates this. According to J. Clemans in Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe And The Insanity Defense, “Poe’s familiarity with the scientific/medical accounts of insanity of his day has been well established” (626). Edgar Allan Poe’s own thoughts on insanity can be viewed in his response to a murder trail which took place in 1840, in which James Wood was acquitted on grounds of insanity of murdering his own daughter. Poe’s thoughts are

In the case of traditional Gothic stories, the horror films Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead or A Nightmare on Elm Street pop into my mind. Edgar Allan Poe was much more into the psychological aspects of murder and terror: it is not the setting or a scary monster, but the narrator’s loony and homicidal mind that gives us goosebumps. In A Cask of Amontillado, our narrator and murderer, Montesor seemingly never goes mad, he commits the crime totally willfully, but he does not show any signs of having gone nuts. Well, of course, we couldn’t call a man, who buries his ’friend’ alive, completely reasonable and sensible. The penultimate sentence („For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them”), however, tells me how deeply affected his mind is by this deed and the remorse, as he is still thinking (in fact writing) about this plot that happened half a century ago. I reckon that despite the calmness Montresor shows, he has been haunted by these thoughts ever since he left his friend to fate. In The Tell-Tale Heart we meet an unnamed narrator, a complete lunatic with a knack for murder. While Montresor at least had a motive for the murder (Fortunato’s constant insults), our loony in The Tell-Tale Heart has none. Our assassin shows a clear aberration for the old man’s ’vulture-eye’ but still he cannot name any lucid reason to kill the man.

Insanity can be defined as being subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. Throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Black Cat”, the notion of insanity is shown to describe the terrible actions of the main character. The narrator of the story is shown to have insanity because of his disturbing actions, thoughts, and his addiction. The insanity is caused by the abuse of alcohol, which leads to his sudden uncontrollable and disturbing nature.

Thesis Statement: In his tragedy Macbeth, William Shakespeare utilizes the motif of sanity/insanity to demonstrate that committing brutal acts can lead a man to irrational behavior and extraordinary changes in one’s sanity.

Another example of insanity being the common theme in Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories can be established in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Montresor, the narrator, becomes enraged when he revisits a time long ago when his worst enemy Fortunato insulted his family. While recalling the occasion years later, Montresor confessions to a crime involving Fortunato. Considering the humiliation and disrespect Montresor felt was inflicted on his family, he wanted revenge stating, “I must not only punish, but punish with impunity” (Poe 250). He felt that retribution was the only way Fortunato could feel the same way as he did when the insult to his family was made. As Montresor and Fortunato walk down into the vaults to look over some newly bought wine,

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a man who is tortured by the eye of an old man. This alone sounds like a madman quality. To get his revenge, he plans to murder the old man. The narrator seeks revenge on the old man simply because “He had the eye of a vulture…” (“Heart” 1). This truly shows the madness the narrator possesses because not many people are tortured by eyes. The reader immediately knows that the narrator is going to murder the old man because he says: “... I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (“Heart” 1). Not only that shows his madness, but the narrator constantly denies the fact that he is mad; throughout the story, he is paranoid that the reader views him as a madman. For example, after explaining the depths he went through to kill the old man, the narrator says: “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer…” (“Heart” 3). The

What is insanity? Insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill or mad. When someone behaves in stubborn ways and becomes agitated and stressed by what seem to be ordinary events, people tend to regard them as insane or in today's society in need of medication. In the play, “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare there are debates to whether or not Hamlet was really insane or not. Hamlet feels he is responding to a higher moral order than ordinary respectability and nice behavior.

The second element of American Gothic Literature is Psychosis. An example, of psychosis in "Moby Dick" is the way Pip acts after the shark almost bite him, and Pip is out there floating for hours. Another example, of psychosis is captain Ahab hate toward Moby Dick. Ahab went insane over Moby

The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is afraid of the old man’s eye to the point of obsession. The narrator justifies murder with his fear of the old man’s “eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture(74). The a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell on me, my blood ran cold” (74). The narrator describes the eye of the old man and uses his fear of it to justify murdering him. The eye symbolizes judgement because it makes the narrator feel like he is living under the shadow of this old man and that he will never be as good as the old man. By obsessing over the eye, the narrator is prevented from thinking clearly causing him to go insane because when one focuses on one thing then he or she will base every choice in the best interest of the obsession instead of a choice that is based on the best interest of the situation. This conveys the message that obsessing over things will cause insanity because if one only focuses on his or her obsession, then he or she will not be able to see things differently or think in a different

During every era of literature, madness is used as a device to help move the plot along, whether it is in ancient writing, William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or Young Adult Novels such as Alice in Wonderland or Percy Jackson and the Olympians. There are many things that could drive a person to madness but if they try and stop the madness by seeking the help they can combat it rather than falling into a dark state of mind that is complete insanity. Most people choose to receive help to defeat their madness.