An online dictionary defines mental illness as “any of various disorders in which a person's thoughts, emotions, or behavior are so abnormal as to cause suffering to himself…or other people;” a second definition is “any of various psychiatric disorders or diseases, usually characterized by impairment of thought, mood, or behavior” (Thefreedictionary.com). In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia,” the narrator perfectly satisfies both of the above definitions. In Poe’s story, the nameless narrator’s beautiful wife Ligeia lives with him a short time before she dies. After her death, the narrator re-marries to Rowena, who eventually dies as well. At the conclusion of the story, his first, beloved wife returns to him through the body of Rowena. In reality, however, Poe’s story is far different from what it at first seems. The narrator, under the influence of opium, creates Ligeia in his mind and, when she “dies,” he kills Rowena himself to bring his first wife back. In the article “Poe’s Ethereal Ligeia,” Jack and June Davis describe “Ligeia” as the faulty account of an insane narrator who “knows Ligeia only through his opium hallucinations but who wants to present her as a real and credible person” (171). The narrator uses Ligeia to chase the elusive secret to eternal life. When she dies, instead of forgoing his search, the narrator procures Rowena in order to present Ligeia with a dead body to return through; thus, he commits murder to carry out his insane plot. Because the narrator of Poe’s story fabricates the existence of his first wife, uses her to pursue eternal life, and kills his second bride to bring Ligeia back, he can be classified as mentally deranged.
Ligeia’s unreality is strong evidence for the instability...
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...im. What the deranged narrator once perceived as a victory over death is, in reality, nothing more than a drug-induced psychotic break.
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In other words, photography can be used to present objectivity, to facilitate treatment and for future re-admissions of the insane. With his presentation Diamond’s application of photography to the insane in asylums became widespread. Just a few years later in 1858 British psychiatrist John Conolly published, “The Physiognomy of Insanity,” in The Medical Times and Gazette. In this series of essays Conolly reproduces photos taken by Diamond and provides a detail of each photo selected. I have included four of the plates Conolly used in his essay below.
Postpartum Without the Parta: An Analysis of Psychosis in The Turn of the Screw After women experience childbirth, it is common for them to experience postpartum depression. For the women suffering this type of depression, they can experience different instances of fear, insomnia and moments of anxiety and paranoia. In the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the narrator begins to show the signs for postpartum depression and psychosis, without having any children and shows a hidden sexual desire about the children. Because of her fear, panicked actions and hasty generalizations throughout the novella, it is clear for readers to question the governess’ sanity and see that she is in a deep stage of psychosis. The Turn of the Screw starts off with the governess arriving at the home to begin her job.
Dementia is a disease that affects the brain’s function of thinking and behavior, and in some cases language and judgment. The disease was proven to interfere with the ability to control emotions and behavior, which explains Poe’s self-destructive mind that lead to his attempt of suicide preceding his wife, Virginia’s, death.(NINDS 1) Poe’s dementia was progressive, meaning that his condition worsened throughout his life. A combination of Poe’s drinking habits and a manic depression could have contributed to this. The slight differences in Poe’s writing demonstrate the progression of mental decline. For example, his writing progresses from his early writing’s appreciation of tragic mysteries of life to an almost pure obsession of death.(Merriman 1)
Poe endured more than any individual should endure, and experienced so much negativity it was almost inevitable that the theme of insanity would appear in his works. He suffered from an excessive amount of hardships and tragedies throughout his life that placed him on the brink of insanity. The first sign of Poe’s insanity is found in his short story “The Black Cat” where the narrator claims “mad [he] is not”. Present in the state of denial, Poe’s character will say or do anything to relinquish the claim of ...
How can we justify if a man is insane or sane? A man may talk like a wise man, and yet act as if he is paranoid. A man with such manner cannot imply insane to us, we can only anticipate he is sane. In this case, the insane man attempted to persuade the reader that he was normal. However, several pieces of evidence indicated his insanity. In Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator is insane because he has a serious illness, he cannot tell fantasy from reality, and he hallucinates. By examining his behaviour and mind, I will analyze his insanity comprehensively.
In the short story, Tell Tale Heart, and The Black cat, Poe wrote as an antagonist, and in both of the stories he was insane but claimed he was not because he was smart enough to come up with an elaborate plan. In the Tell Tale Heart, he was a man who was obsessed with this guys eye, and he planned out an elaborate plan to kill him and hide him under the planks of the floor, and claimed since he was so smart to come up with a plan like that, that he wasn’t insane. Poe stated in the Tell Tale Heart, “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (1). He thought this and decided that it was justified because he was smart. Their relationships in the story are just an old man that he finds intriguing because of his eye, and they have a trusting relationship because he gives him access to his house while he's sleeping.
Poe knew one author he held in especially high regards. “Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron” (Poe’s Life”). Despite his father’s wishes, he admired the works of his youth’s inspiration, Lord George Byron, and aspired to become a writer like him. During his time as a writer, he met a woman named Nancy Richmond, a fellow author. “His idealized and platonic love of her inspired some of his greatest poetry, including ‘For Annie’” (“Poe’s Life”). Nancy Richmond was able to influence Poe’s writings due to his love for her. However, she was not the only woman to impact his publications, Poe has been influenced by many women- many of whom were dead. “One of Poe’s biggest fears was female abandonment. Through either death or estrangement, he lost almost every woman in his life, and his creation of some of the most distinctive female characters in fiction can be seen as attempts to reanimate those lost women” (“The Supernatural Psychology of Edgar Allan Poe”). Poe’s fear of female abandonment was prominently displayed in his writings, shown by the constant female deaths in his works. When his wife, Virginia, passed away “Poe was devastated, and unable to write for months” (“Poe’s Life”). He suffered a mental breakdown due to his wife’s passing, which would later influence his writings. The persistent deaths and estrangements of the women in his life led him to be fascinated with tragedy and horror. “Poe’s emotional constitution and life beset by tragedy fostered that would earn him a place among the greatest of the Romantic and Gothic writers. Broody and prone to fits of melancholy, Poe had a natural predilection for dramatic themes of lost love and tragic illness...Poe’s fascination with the macabre led him to
For the average person, it is impossible to fathom the internal conflicts which a madman suffers on a daily basis. An insane person reacts irrationally and severe actions are often taken to deal with basic conflicts. These actions are often unpredictable. Although madness may not be understood by a completely sane person, someone who alternates from madness to sanity knows both worlds. A man who seems to have this capability is Edgar Allan Poe. Writer Edgar Allan Poe brilliantly demonstrates the theme of insanity by interpreting many different aspects of mental illness in the narrator of “A Tell-Tale Heart.” In “A Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator displays symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Anosognosia, indicating that although he believes himself to be a sane man, he is actually severely ill.
It states in biography.com Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is mystery and gore it brings up many distant yet profound things that no one really thinks about even including drugs. All his writing like this that created such a vivid picture, the multitude could not help but think that there was something going on in is mind or life that was making him delirious. Despite everyone's thinking he was mostly sane with the condition of depression this might have helped him think of things that would show up in one's nightmares but it is not all that
Mental illness is referred to as a wide range of conditions that affects the mind, mood, and behaviors that are abnormal to normalcy. Many people in the past thought mental illness was the cause of by supernatural beings in relations to evil spirits or demons. The treatments that were used to rid the evil spirit out of the body were exorcism and trephining the skull until Hippocrates used scientific reasoning to assess and treat those abnormalities that he thought were all natural causes during the 3rd century BC.
This is shown by the multiple times the man calls himself a genius, often having a distorted perception of insanity. Repeatedly, the man says that he is not moronic, which is the clearly false converse of the statement:”If you are at the mental age under 10(in other words, idiotic), then you are insane.” What our protagonist has done is he has taken the inverse, or rather reciprocal, the converse of the conditional if put into mathematical terms. “If you are insane, then your mental age is under 10.” It is clear that the man has deemed this converse to be true, thinking that insanity can only be represented by the keen aspects of one’s knowledge, unable to grasp at the truth, making excuses thinking that a lie can become a truth. “Now this 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, 1843). Thus, shows how he has only a fragmented view of the standard person, or rather put it, unable to perceive the limits and extents to distinguish the fine line of sanity and insanity. Although this may be the case, the man clearly stated how he planned and executed his premeditated act, as evidence for a death sentence. Nevertheless, it is clear that he has shown actions of narcissism and hallucinations caused by
At the very beginning of the story he insists he is not. The first line of the story is, “True! - Nervous - Very very dreadful I had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?” (Poe 81) He is intensely nervous and already questions his readers. Poe then writes “The disease had sharpened my senses- not destroyed- not dulled.” (Poe 81) An insane person
”Poe’s family died off of the disease tuberculosis and this made him feel depressed and he then wrote story’s like “The black cat” where he reflects how his wife died of the diseases. Poe’s writing called “The Raven” reflects on the lost loved one he misses so much. “The Raven” also shows how Poe drank so much that he dreamed of his wife and thought she was still alive, but it all turns out that it was a dream.”(“ Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web.”)
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific, acclaimed writers known today. His various, diverse writings have been studied, discussed and analyzed by many. Many of his works, from his poem “The Raven”, to his short story “The Cask of Amontillado” are extremely well-known and highly regarded. His writings are known in particular for their melancholy and often gruesome themes. Who is the man behind the literature that had become so much a part of today’s culture? What experiences may he have drawn upon in order to create his many masterpieces? Edgar Allan Poe’s mental illness impacted his life in many ways, and strongly influenced his works.
“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.