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PORTRAYAL of Madness in Black Cat by Poe
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Edgar Allan Poe uses the theme of the clouded judgment of a psychotic individual to further develop his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In the beginning of this piece, the persona constantly tries to insist he has a sound mind by creating excuses for any demonstrations of insanity in his behavior. After he is finished with affirming his supposed sanity, the narrator begins to tell the reader a story in an attempt to provide his audience with an example of how mentally healthy he believes himself to be. However, the story the persona discusses is riddled with tons of logical fallacies, which provides evidence towards the claim the narrator is indeed insane, not sane as he thinks himself as. An example of the persona’s twisted reasoning
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator realizes that he absences a reason for killing the old man he lives with. He even starts to admit having to love the man. He states, “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye” (Poe 64). Psychosis is seen in the difficult rationality the narrator uses to defend his murder. The logic the narrator provides is that he thinks the desire to murder the old man results from the man’s eye, which bothers him. He says, “When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!” (Poe 65). The fact that by this man’s eye is what makes him very angry is such a irrelevant reason for the narrator to kill him. This proves that he is not mentally stable, anyone in their right state of mind would not want to commit such a crime due to an irritation of someone’s eye. This represents the idea that this narrator expresses his complete lack of sanity through the premeditation and planning he put into committing the murder. In the beginning of the story, he says “vulture eye” giving the impression that he is uncertain that the eye is the reason for the murder, he also says how he thinks it’s the eye, he uses past tense as opposed to declaring with certainty that this is why the killing of the man. This shows the contrast to how as a sane person would be sure that this is their reason for killing another person before committing.
The behavior of the narrator in The Tell-Tale heart demonstrate characteristic that are associated with people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoid schizophrenia . When Poe wrote this story in 1843 obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia had not been discovered. However in modern times the characteristics demonstrated by the narrator leads people to believe that he has a mental illness. Poe’s narrator demonstrates classic signs throughout the story leading the reader to believe that this character is mad
"The Tell-Tale Heart" consists of a monologue in which the murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt: "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded . . ." (Poe 121). By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is indeed deranged. E. Arthur Robinson feels that by using this irony the narrator creates a feeling of hysteria, and the turmoil resulting from this hysteria is what places "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the list of the greatest horror stories of all time (94).
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator attempts to assert his sanity while describing a murder he carefully planned and executed. Despite his claims that he is not mad, it is very obvious that his actions are a result of his mental disorder. Hollie Pritchard writes in her article, “it has been suggested that it is not the idea but the form of his madness that is of importance to the story” (144). There is evidence in the text to support that the narrator suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was experiencing the active phase of said disease when the murder happened. The narrator’s actions in “The Tell-Tale Heart” are a result of him succumbing to his paranoid schizophrenia.
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart". First, Poe suggests the narrator is insane by his assertions of sanity. For example, the narrator declares that he planned the murder so expertly he could not be insane. He says, "Now this is the point.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I am Olivia Johnson and today I am here to prove that this man was perfectly sane the entire time he killed the innocent old man. “ The night waned, and I worked hastily, out in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse, I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.” This is a line that the narrator from “The Tell Tale Heart” (by Edgar Allan Poe) and how could someone insane give so much detail to every little move that they make. Many insane people forget what they did in the heat of the moment and clearly in the quote above this man has not forgot one thing that he did that night. Another line from “The Tell Tale Heart” (by Edgar Allan Poe) is “ I then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly that no human eye -- not even his -- could
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence,” Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is famous in the writing world and has written many amazing stories throughout his gloomy life. At a young age his parents died and he struggled with the abuse of drugs and alcohol. A great amount of work he created involves a character that suffers with a psychological problem or mental illness. Two famous stories that categorize Poe’s psychological perspective would be “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Both of these stories contain many similarities and differences of Poe’s psychological viewpoint.
Human nature is a conglomerate perception which is the dominant liable expressed in the short story of “A Tell-Tale Heart”. Directly related, Edgar Allan Poe displays the ramifications of guilt and how it can consume oneself, as well as disclosing the nature of human defense mechanisms, all the while continuing on with displaying the labyrinth of passion and fears of humans which make a blind appearance throughout the story. A guilty conscience of one’s self is a pertinent facet of human nature that Edgar Allan Poe continually stresses throughout the story. The emotion that causes a person to choose right from wrong, good over bad is guilt, which consequently is one of the most ethically moral and methodically powerful emotion known to human nature. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe displays the narrator to be rather complacent and pompous, however, the narrator establishes what one could define as apprehension and remorse after committing murder of an innocent man. It is to believe that the narrator will never confess but as his heightened senses blur the lines between real and ...
Does the narrator show weakness through this mental illness or is it a sophistical mind of a genius? This is the question that must be answered here. Throughout this discussion we will prove that the narrator is a man of a conscience mind and committed the crime of murder. Along with that we will expose Poe’s true significance of writing this short story, and how people were getting away with crime by justifying that they were insane.
All mental illnesses, despite whatever effects they may hold, have strong impacts on the lives of those who possess it. These problems can create an unpredictable turn of events that drive the person insane and ruin their lives, but also has the possibility to make the person stronger, may it be mentally or physically. Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart is told in the position of a mentally unstable man who describes the murder he committed while hopelessly convincing the reader that he is sane. However, the relationships between characters are unclear, but there are many possible relations that seem suitable to the characters in the story. One such common deduction includes the narrator being hired as a butler by the old man, and had worked for him
The Tale Tell Heart” is a short story in which Edgar Allen Poe, the author, illustrates the madness and complexity of an individual. The unnamed narrator, who is Poe’s main character, is sharing his story of him murdering an old man on the sole reason of his dislike for his filmy blue eye, which reminds him of a vulture. He meticulously plans the murder of this old man, and attempts to cover up the act through his twister persona. In the "Tell-Tale Heart", Poe uses satire, imagery, and symbolism to portray how startlingly perverted the mind of the narrator is and how guilt always prevails.
Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as an influential author to the genre of horror and gothic tales that suggest what is out there (Van Leer back cover). Poe is best known for his dark and gruesome images, centered on death in order to provide his readers a sense of terror within oneself by showcasing what one is capable of doing (Giammarco 5). These qualities are contributed in Poe’s short stories such as, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ as they all depict various characteristics of different individuals placed in society through the device of the narrator. Poe has faced many challenges in his life from an early age including loss, illness, a difficult upbringing and heavy gambling and drinking problems (Giammarco 4). Although, these tragic events helped Poe to become one of the most well known American Poets of the 19th century (Giammarco 6).
The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man's eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed 'perfect'; crime. People tend to think that insane persons are beyond the normal realm of reason shared by those who are in their right mind. This is not so; guilt is an emotion shared by all humans. The most demented individuals are not above the feeling of guilt and the havoc it causes to the psyche. Poe's use of setting, character, and language reveal that even an insane person feels guilt. Therein lies the theme to The Tell Tale Heart: The emotion of guilt easily, if not eventually, crashes through the seemingly unbreakable walls of insanity.