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Examples Of Mental Illness In The Tell Tale Heart

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Mental Unreliability and “The Tell-Tale Heart” In the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe is deemed mentally unreliable. The narrator is mentally unstable and is unable to see reality outside of his constant paranoia. Throughout the story, the narrator shows signs that he may have obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and that he is brutally insecure. In the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator shows in many instances that he is insecure with himself and what he is capable of doing in his life. One example of this was when the narrator stated, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what caution-with what foresight-with what dissimulation I went to work!” (Poe 37). This …show more content…

The narrator displays this in the story when he mentions how for a week, he looks into the room of the old man to see the “evil eye”. This is shown in the story where the narrator states, “And this I did for seven long nights- every night just at midnight- but I found the eye always close” (Poe 37). One of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder is to “perform routines and rituals over and over” (National Institute of Mental Health). Another example of the narrator’s obsessive-compulsiveness is when he says, “I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it… I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 37). The narrator was so obsessed with the eye of the old man, when the eye was completely normal. He felt that if the eye was gone, then his problems would be gone as well. However, this is not the case. Throughout the story, the author shows that he is mentally unreliable due to his obsessive-compulsive

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