Examples Of Mental Illness In Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” follows the unnamed main character as he slowly devolves into madness brought about by his severe alcoholism and subsequent bizarre abhorrence of cats. The narrator starts as a kind and loving person but by the end of the story is a violent and remorseless deviant. Throughout the story it is apparent that the narrator is drifting further and further from reality. As his drinking worsens, the narrator finds himself becoming increasingly violent, irrational and depraved.

They say that the mind is the most powerful and valuable thing that humanity possesses: It can create places, scenarios, and being that have unlimited power. Though it may be fun to have all this power in our heads, one must ask what happens if one’s mental stability starts to cave in on itself and the effects might it have on somebody, what grand delusions Might come from the confines of a deranged mind; one might also ask what this might do to the appearance of the owner of that mindset. Famed writers Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving Attempted to answer these very questions themselves with stories like The Raven and The Black Cat by Poe and The Devil and Tom Walker.

Edgar Allan Poe, an infamous writer, is known for his mysterious and somber tales sharing similar themes of insanity. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of his most illustrious stories, published in 1843, that shares the chilling murder of a man through the point of view of the killer. Another one of Poe’s works, “The Cask of Amontillado”, published in the year of 1846, similarly tells of a murder fueled by the narrator’s desire of revenge. Both of Poe’s stories have mentally unstable narrators with like qualities, however, their personalities, motives, and guilt presented in the story vary greatly.

Dark romantic writers explores the evil sides of humanity, such as Edgar Allan Poe, when he exposes readers to the dangers of loss and isolation. One midnight when the narrator was reminiscing over his lost Lenore, a raven flew in his window and confronted him. He loses himself and reality the more he talks with the raven, as he longs to see his lost love, Lenore. In stanza fourteen of “The Raven,” Poe uses several allusions and imagery to show the narrator’s growing mental instability and paranoia due to living in solitude and his never ending love for the missed Lenore.     Poe uses imagery to identify the point when the narrator starts going crazy.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a man is murdered and dismembered at the hand of an insane unnamed narrator. The narrator goes on to defend his sanity by pushing the audience question what it means to be sane. When an opportunity arises for the narrator to convince officers that all is normal, he collapses under the weight of his guilty conscious. The actions of the unnamed narrator illustrate an image of today’s society and its view of mental illnesses, but overall makes the audience question the meaning of insanity.

Edgar Allan Poe, was especially antisocial, and some would say insane. His “insanity” was solely prompted by events in his life. On December 8, 1811, both of Poe's parents died from the dreadful disease, tuberculosis. Poe's foster mother, with whom he was close with, dies in Richmond on February 28, 1829 from a long sickness. Upon the date Aug 1, 1831, Poes older brother Henry dies of either tuberculosis or cholera at the age of 27. Poe's wife Virginia died of tuberculosis on Jan 30, 1847 (Poe Museum). Poe has been so despondent while the illness consumed the final months of Virginia's life that friends thought he was going insane. The loss of his wife extended Poes dependency on alcohol. Some of Poe’s beliefs were viewed as ludicrous, but truly were coherent. Poe expresses these beliefs throughout his stories.These beliefs include, alcohol can end and destroy one's life, there's nothing to stop death, and that true happiness is not possible as long as moral evil lurks within the darkness.

Throughout all the short stories and poems written by Edgar Allan Poe, some connections can be made on the content, as in “The Black Cat”, and “The Raven”, are two narratives written by Poe, that unveil the themes and symbols he often uses in his work. Poe is on the mysterious side, but he is also taking the life he is given, and making his narratives raw and realist by some degree. Poe uses techniques that left him express his imagination through writing. There are many different ideas and questions arising from all his work. “The Black Cat” and “The Raven”, are two narratives that use similar themes and symbols that allow readers to receive a small connection of the madness inside of the narrators.

Edgar Allen Poe’s 1843 short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” dwells on themes of true insanity and what it does to its victims. The unnamed narrator begins a fixation of an old man’s eye and decides the old man meet his demise for him to truly receive peace. There is tension between readers of “The Tell-Tale Heart” over if the illness within the narrator is mentally ill or not. Throughout the story his mental illnesses are showcased first-person, including a continuous plot of him trying to prove to himself that he is not mad, and a subconscious guilt for murdering the old man. Denial is a side effect of insanity.

Throughout all of his works, Edgar Allan Poe followed a common theme of love, death, and insanity. His stories and poems were different from anything else published during that time period. The horrors and suspense described in his story led many people to believe Poe must be somewhat insane. However, when taking a look into his mostly tragic life, it is no wonder Poe never wrote happy stories. Depression and grief was almost all Poe was accustomed to, especially after losing the love of his life, his wife Virginia. The intense heartache Poe felt for that loss is evident in several of his works, but in his poem “The Raven”, the reality of that heartache becomes even more powerful.

Aristotle once said, “No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.” Poe’s works present a mix of dark and insane characters who all experience different situations that lead to death. He tends to base his stories from his personal life, experiences, and other factors from the Victorian era. Poe presents themes of family, sanity and insanity, and human experience to reflect ideals of his life, romanticism, and the Victorian era. To begin with, Poe presents the theme of sanity and insanity.

Along with the majority of his tales, Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a grim plot that includes the downfall of its narrator in order to portray a human nature contrary to the archetypal transcendentalist version. The undoing of the chronicler is found in the unraveling of his mental state, which leads him to commit draconian actions on his cat, including cutting its eye out and then hanging it. Poe further emphasizes the narrator’s

Edgar Allan Poe has a distinctive and dark way of writing (Poe & Kennedy, pp.22). His mysterious style of writing appeals to passion and sentimentality. Poe’s most prominent works of fiction are gothic. His stories tend to have similar recurring theme of either death, lost love or both. Poe’s psychologically thrilling stories examining the depths of the humanoid psyche earned him much fame throughout his lifetime and after his death. And this distinctive style of writing made him possess his own style of wiring (Arbor, pp.71). There is a psychological concentration which is an important characteristic of Poe’s literatures, particularly the tales of horror that encompass his best and well-known works, such as The Black Cat and The Raven which

“The Raven” symbolizes to Poe, why this poem is so deeply credited for this author, and what made him decide to write the poem. People wonder what truly went on in the mind of Poe as he was writing one of his many great works. His dynamic use of figurative language, color symbols, and illusions truly bring out a state of mind that he has not expressed in any of his other

The psychology or mental state of the narrator of Edger Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” is a broad area to analyze. The human mind is one of the most articulate system that is made in this world. It’s difficult to understand everybody’s actions and doings because everyone possesses their own unique patterns of thinking. Today, the world of psychology is hard at work to try to figure out the best answers to the questions we have about the mid. Even before the subject of psychology was produced, some writers loosely described the psychology and everything that goes into it. Edger Allan Poe was one of them who portrayed his characters in way that the reader could look further in to their actions and their behaviors to understand the mind better. Poe seemed to have an understanding and fascination for the human, and “The Black Cat” is one of them. The protagonist of the story and his psychology has brought into light in this short story. In this work, Edgar Allan Poe presents the main character, the protagonist, who becomes victim to many complex mind issues such as guilt, perversity, superstitions, revenge, and reverse psychology.

Edgar Allan Poe work can be related to allot of literature criticisms, but it is most familiarized with psychoanalytic criticism and New Historicism because the stories he wrote had allot to do with the mind and how people would behave also he wrote stories based off old history and beliefs.