The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

The second reason why this man deserves justice is because he was obviously having some sort of mental breakdown at the time of his “crime”. He seems to be violently angry and very anxious. In the story, my client had just killed the old man and begins conversing with himself, “--do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror” (3). This quotes helps prove that the narrator is innocent for plea of insanity because he is showing another major symptom of a mental disease- anxious or violent outbursts. The man even admits to being nervous before he killed the old man. The quote also describes how the old man's dead heart still beating in the narrator's mind and is taking over his thoughts. My client also connects his hypnotic state to bringing him “uncontrollable terror”. This supports his symptoms of anxiety because it shows his mind being taken over by his nervousness. Towards the end of the text, the narrator feels too guilted and lets his anger get the best of himself, “I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually

On the other hand, I could see why some say he is sane. In some parts of the story he is in his right mind. Like when he said, “But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wishing them gone.” (page four). I feel as if he had come to his senses and figured out what he did. So, while he was doing the murder, he didn’t know what he was doing. But, afterwards it hit him. He learned what he did.

It’s not like he can control the insanity. It’s basically an illness. The narrator was just insane. I even showed you all the proof to show you how he is insane. If it was first degree murder then he wouldn’t have heard the things he was hearing.

Why the Narrator of “Tell-Tale Heart” is Insane The narrator in Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” gives testimony defending his sanity. To do this he must prove that he can distinguish fantasy from reality, can manage his own affairs, and can control impulsive behaviors. Given his testimony on the facts surrounding the murder the narrator is not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

It has been said that the narrator in Tell-Tale Heart was insane. I believe that he was insane because the narrator could have schizophrenia (a severe brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally). One effect of schizophrenia is disordered thinking and behavior, in the story the narrator the narrator was hearing the beating of the old mans hideous heart and he thought that everyone could hear it. Another example he could be insane was because in the story it was said that he killed the old man because of his milky white eye, the eye had gotten to be too much for the narrator to handle.

The narrator from the ‘’The Tell-Tale Heart” is insane because he murdered an innocent old man over an eye. The old man did nothing to the narrator. The narrator was just freaked out over the eye and didn’t want to see the eye any longer. So he just murdered the man for no reason whatsoever .The narrator is insane for many reasons.

He makes it seem as if we were there ourselves. Throughout the story he keeps saying do you think I’m insane now? As if he was trying to convince himself that he is sane. He takes pride in how he kills the man and how thoroughly he thought the kill through. To me that sounds like he is insane.

"He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man" (2). This citation shows the narrator wanting to kill the old man. Killing a person does not convey that he is insane and that his story is not to be believed. What does show that he is mad, is the reason for killing the old man.

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.

“They heard!-they suspected!-They knew!-they were making a mockery of my horror.” The mentally unstable narrator thought the cops knew that he had committed the crime. The story The Tell-Tale Heart is about an old man’s brutal murder committed by his caretaker. The caretaker killed him over his eye, but later on confessed to the crime because he couldn’t stand the old man’s beating heart in his head. Consequently, the narrator is insane and shouldn’t be punished.

At the beginning of "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator emphatically denies that he is mentally unstable and cries, "True! nervous very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?...Hearken! and observe how healthily how calmly I can tell you the whole story" (Poe 37). As the narrator begins to tell the tale of how he prepared to murder his neighbor in order to rid himself of his narrator's "evil eye," it is evident that the narrator is mentally unstable and may be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or some other ailment.

This story is told through the eyes of a madman……...who, like all of us believed that he was sane. The narrator is insane because he hides the body and he then admits to doing the deed after a long event of grief.

The man was obviously insane, but he claimed he was not. In the story he stated, "Now is the point. 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, 2) Later, he kills an old man, who has a blue eye that he despises. He does everything that he can think of to hide the fact that he killed the man. He cuts up the body in the bathtub and hides the limbs under a floorboard. Police arrive, because the woman next door heard a shriek. They search the house and the madman claims that the old man was on vacation. He is talking to the police when he hears the old man's heart beating in his head and admits to the

The narrator is insane because, killed the old man over his blind eye because, he thought that the old man’s eye was evil. He heard the old man’s dead heart beat after he kills him, He then decides to cut up the old man’s body into tiny bits of small pieces which is (Dismembered). He also stalked the old man for Seven nights while he was sleeping, i think he is insane because an ordinary person wouldn’t want to kill a person over their blind eye and, they wouldn’t think it’s evil and, they wouldn’t cut up a body and an normal person couldn’t be able to hear another person’s heart beat. The blind eye would probably scare someone but that person wouldn’t want to kill the person of their blind eye, That’s just a natural thing of life.

The answer that Ken Frieden gives to this question is a positive one. He downplays the contrast between the sane narrative and mad narrator: “The discrepancy between sane narrator and madman perhaps shows the error of assuming that linguistic normalcy implies psychological normalcy.” Friedan took it for granted that the narrator is mad because he kills an old man for no reason. He is doubly mad, Friedan said, when he imagines he hears the pounding of the dead man's heart and gives away the crime he had concealed. Yet the narrator tells a coherent tale, as if to demonstrate out of spite that he is sane, refuting the ordinary belief that he must be mad.