The Theme Of Insanity In Edgar Allen Poe's A Tell-Tale Heart

Spontaneous versus premeditated, death versus murder, sane vs insane. Both the Prosecution and Defense have strong evidence to prove their case. It’s all completely debatable, and always will be, but I feel I have suitable evidence to prove Mr. Poe was sane. Based on the evidence given in The Tell-Tale Heart, Mr. Poe was perfectly sane at the time of Mr. White’s murder.

Insanity- the state of being mentally ill. Could insanity be an excuse for an unforgivable crime? In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, we come face to face with a man reliving his killing of an innocent man and learn the chilling state of mind the narrator has decreased to. It is clear he is mentally ill from the start of the story and it is constant throughout the text. The narrator is not guilty for reasons of insanity because he converses and argues with voices in his head, hears nonexistent sounds, and killed an innocent man because he believed his eye was haunting him. Some may claim that there is no excuse for murder, but this man is obviously mentally challenged, therefore should not be degraded any further

The word insane is a legal term. Because research has identified many different mental illnesses of varying severities, it is now too simplistic to describe a severely mentally ill person merely as insane. The federal law states that insanity is a fair defense if " at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendants as a result of sever mental disease or defect was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of his acts"(Knowles). The American

Everyone does something at some point in their life that can be considered insane. Sometimes it’s simple things like trying a new food or a new hobby. However, other times it can be more extreme such as stepping outside of the status quo or jumping out of an airplane. The story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl takes the term “insane” a bit farther. The story depicts the life of Mary Maloney and describes the event in which she hit and killed her husband with a leg of lamb after receiving unfortunate news from husband when he returned home from work. However, Mary Maloney is innocent due to reason of Insanity due to her inability of being aware of her actions throughout the story. She does this by portraying the symptoms of a person with schizophrenia, attempting to maintain to the forced conformity of gender roles, and her over attachment or jealousy for her husband.

The definition of insanity varies from state to state, and some states don’t even have the defense. Florida has codified the centuries-old “M’Naghten” test for determining whether a defendant was insane when the crime was committed. A person is insane when (1) he has a mental infirmity, disease, or defect. (2) Because of this condition (a) he didn’t know what he was doing or its consequences or (b) he did not know what he was doing was wrong.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character, the narrator, kills the old man because he disliked his eye. He claims his motivation is neither the old man wronging him nor desire for money, but rather a fear of the man’s pale blue eye. The narrator insists that he is not crazy, even though he goes to the elderly man’s apartment and observes the man sleeping. The narrator shows clear signs of insanity by having no reason or killing the old man, confessing to the perfect crime, and enjoying murdering an innocent person.

An insane person would not comprehend that they were unstable. Only a rational person would realize that the brain is not functioning properly. An insane person doesn’t know they are irrational. The main characters continuously get mad at her husband, because "You see he does not believe I am sick,"(Perkins, 647). Her frustration with John proves that she was sane from the beginning.

Throughout books and movies, characters are portrayed as insane all the time. Characters show signs of insanity such as hallucinations, forgetfulness, or performing weird and unusual actions. When someone is shown as insane, it means that the state of mind prevents people from normal behavior and perception. An example of a character being insane throughout a story is the article “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson. The narrator in this article is obviously insane because she thinks everything in the room is for fun, she is abnormally focused on random things, and she does not realize HUGE things like what she is being kept from and how she is treated.

The killer says “I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart.” In addition to the legal def. of insane is also “couldn’t control his/her behavior.” The killer knew what the old man felt, and even felt bad for him too, but the killer couldn’t control himself and killed the old man anyways. The killers heart was one way and his mind was another.

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

Once again, I believe the mental state of the madman is insanity. “Why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them” (Poe). If one reads between the lines, he is calling himself mad. The narrator is contradicting himself by saying he is not insane but saying the insanity heightened his senses.

In Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the man who kills the old man believes that he is entirely sane and does the crime because of his calculations and his enhanced senses. Even though he tries to convince the reader he isn’t mad/insane he acts that way the entire story which shows that he is actually insane when commits the crime. For example, the story he says “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night” which would be a weird thing for someone who is sane. This shows that he is insane because a normal person gets logical ideas unlike weird ones. For example, a person who is insane would think that jumping of a tall building into a pool would be fun, while someone else would think

“A sane man often reasons from sound premises; an insane man commonly reasons as well, but the premises are unsound.” Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, insanity has been argued many times if it should be considered a mental illness that would prevent a complete sentence. It is when a person can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, when they are prevented from conducting their daily life and finally, are victim to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. This is not their fault- they just happened to be born like that. Insane people don’t understand what they are doing no more than a child could because while they can reason with themselves, what comes out of that thought process is often irregular. Insanity can be temporary in someone’s paranoia or

Have you ever wondered what the difference between a sane and an insane person was, and how to spot it? A sign of being legally insane is not knowing what you have done, or are doing is wrong. The main character of this story clearly does not know what he is doing is wrong. He watched this man for several days and planned the murder. He also killed the man and felt nothing but relief. Many people belive the man is not legally insane because he felt guilt after what he did. That sounds reasonable but you failed to consider several details. The man is legally insane.

Insanity is a chemical imbalance in the brain. According to the legal definition, this can urge one to behave spontaneously, have a false sense of reality, and be incapable of dealing with situations in a healthy manner. Speaking of madness, one night, an assassination took place. A plain old man prepared for his slumber, unaware that Death was inching closer by the second, coming for his “vulture” eye. Even less mindful that he was going to wind up severed under the floorboards of his very home. However, was this an act of insanity or the workings of a murderer?