Insanity In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

In America, mental conditions like bipolar disorder and mania, schizophrenia, and clinical depression could admit one to an asylum or mental institution. At this time, the use of public hangings was declining along with the rise of abolition (Thaxton, Cirrelia). The narrator was not losing his mind and acting out in fits of rage for others to watch in amazement, he was actually somewhat sane. However, to what degree, the reader cannot be sure if he is psychologically

The narrator’s fury towards the old man indicates the narrator has a double personality. This allows him to be kind to a man whom he hates. Readers fear this narrator because he does not hate the man, but the man’s

guilty for starting the duel that led to his own death. The body was to be dragged by a hurdle,

This is interpreted to mean the narrator chopped up and hid the body in the floor. While this is a valid point, the following testimony form paragraph 14-15 argues against it “they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.” Continued in paragraph 15, “I smiled, --for what had I to fear?...  I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well… I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues”.

When I first started to read this book I was kind of confused on what was exactly going on, I thought that he was crazy at first but, when he saw

An unnamed narrator opens the story by stating his audience and claiming that he is nervous but not insane. Throughout the story he defends his sanity and claims that his deeds are reasonable and are those of a normal human being. Even after murdering the old man, the narrator ignores to accept the fact that he is insane.

Poe, make the reader confuse of why the narrator is insane. But the narrator does reveals his insanity. His obsession reveals the insanity in the narrator. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart story was obsessed with the old man’s eye, old man’s

He in the end became extremely anxious, that people were out to get him, the way he thinks is distorted. The narrator ends up killing an old man, he knowingly committed the crime, however he is obviously deranged and belongs in a mental hospital, rather than prison. A way to portray being legally insane, is when you commit a crime because you were compelled by an irresistible force. The narrator didn't even have a problem with the old man.

While in the room where the old man was is buried, the narrator is sitting on a chair, which is above where the old man’s body parts are. He engages in conversation with the policemen. In the narrators mind, he starts to feel guilty his anxiety rises. He believes he starts to hear the old

His use of literary devices, including that of allusion and imagery, point-of-view, and symbolism primes the stage for the narrator’s transformation from a manipulated identity to the pragmatic and careful person that finds himself to be a man who is ‘invisible.’

Heart?. In other Poe works like ?The Raven?, Poe uses one object and tries to play upon

Before beginning, the narrator states that he is anxious and nervous. He however claims that he isn’t insane and proves his sanity by offering his calmness throughout the progression of the narration. The narrator explains that even though he loved this old man who never had wronged him, he just couldn’t tolerate his

This helps build to the horror effect of the setting because he starts off as a normal person but as we get farther threw the story he becomes more and more insane and crazy. This is another excellent way this author help set the scene of the story. Edgar Allan Poe did a great job at writing this story even though it was after his life and what had happen in his life.

True! Nervous -- very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? Insanity is not being able to distinguish fantasy from reality. The narrator does not know how to distinguish the two, so he is not guilty. If someone is unable to recognize the difference between fantasy and reality then whosoever suffers from this is mentally insane and deserves the rights of and deserves the rights of a mentally incapable person. The narrator is insane because he plotted a murder without malicious intent but and hears strange things after he killed the man due to the disease he references many times in the text.

In the first few paragraphs of the story, the narrator makes a point of rejecting the idea that he is mad. It almost seems as if he goes out of his way to reassure readers that he is indeed sane. It was at this point that I first got an inclination that the narrator was unreliable, either because he is insane, or just lying. The average person who