Why Does Edgar Allan Poe Use The Insanity Plea

In court, one may try to use the insanity plea. The insanity plea is when someone could not tell right from wrong during the time that the crime was committed, or if the person could not control their actions when committing the crime. Pleading insane only works one percent of the time in modern day court. Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a fictional story about a man who kills an older blind man because the way his eye looks paranoise him. The man, who also narrates the story, spends seven nights looking at the old man while he sleeps, plotting his death. On the eighth night, the narrator murders the old man and hides the body, only to confess out of guilt to the police when they come over that night. The narrator should not be able to use the insanity plea in a court of law. The insanity plea should not be allowed because the narrator has an idea that he did something wrong, and the narrator was able to control his impulses when he murdered the man. While some may say

In the story, when the narrator leaps into the room to kill the old man, he expresses the beating of the heart when he says, “But the beating grew louder… I thought the heart must burst.” (Line 111) As one can see, the narrator, who is already nervous, is having the utmost anxiety about killing the man, causing him to experience the beating of the heart. In an article on anxiety hallucinations, the text states that people with anxiety can experience auditory hallucinations when under a great deal of nervous tension. This applies to the narrator when he thought he was hearing the old man’s heartbeat. Evidently, when the narrator was nervous about killing the old man, he was having a great amount of anxiety, provoking him to hear his own heartbeat. While some may suggest that the narrator having acute senses when hearing the old man’s heart beating proves him insane, the heartbeat is unquestionably his own heartbeat caused by his