Insanity is a disease capable of making a person lose control of themselves. On the other hand, sanity is when a person is what others call “normal”. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe the narrator kills a man and he is confessing to the cops about it. He confesses how long the murder took and what he did each night and how he executed the murder. However, the narrator is not guilty because of the reason of insanity. One sign of the narrator being insane is that he has impulsive behavior. For example, the narrator says, “First of all, I dismembered the corpse, I cut off the head, and the arms, and the legs, or … works as well” (12). This means that he cut off the body without thinking about it beforehand. Furthermore, the narrator also says that he did not just leave the body there, but hid it too. All of this matters because it was a very sudden action he …show more content…
While this may be the case, many people may think he was fully aware of what he was doing. This can be proven wrong because the narrator states, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me... I think it was his eye yes, it was this!”(2).This quote reveals that it was not the old man at all that had made him want to murder him, it was his eye that was his motivation. This shows that he is not in control of his own morals because a trivial reason made him want to kill someone he loved. So, how could you say that he is fully in control of what he is doing if he were to kill someone he loved for a trivial reason? Overall, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” kills a man, but he is not guilty due to the reason of insanity. The narrator is not guilty because he has impulsive behavior when he cuts up the old man. He also is not guilty because he cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and he cannot control his own morals. So, why not give this man a second chance? Everyone deserves
While what he did was horrible and insane-like, the narrator did this process very sanely and put lots of thought into it. No absolute insane person would spend days and days watching someone sleep, or acting perfectly normal around victim just so they could tike their kill perfectly, even though watching someone sleep is an insane trait. He was very cautious in this, “But you should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work!” and proved to be quite patient, “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.’’ So he couldn’t have been totally insane, right?
First-Degree Murder is the most serious crime that can be committed, punishable by the death penalty. Once someone commits this crime, they are forever known as a dangerous and terrible person. The decision to murder someone is usually conscious, but in some occasions the suspect can plead innocent for reasons of temporary insanity. In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, a man decided to murder his neighbor because he was scared of the neighbor’s eye. When the police came to interrogate him, the man heard a heartbeat in his head.
The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.
The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.
Insanity is a deranged state of the mind. Not everyone has the same experiences nor the same symptoms which lead to their mental disorder. In her story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents a peculiar case of insanity. The main character is put on bed rest to overcome her temporary nervous depression. However, while being stuck inside the room, the unreliable narrator increasingly becomes more and more symptomatic.
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ( Voltaire) This quote helps explain the main idea of The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe , a story about a narrator who is the caregiver of the old man who explains his reasons and his exact ways for killing the old man he was taking care of. Out of spite for the victims vulture-like cataract eye, he plots this plan to kill for weeks to rid of the eye. He finally succeeds until a nosy neighbor foils the scheme. These are 3 reasons why the narrator is guilty of murder.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator should not be guilty by reason of insanity. “Insanity Defense” states that a man is innocent by means of insanity if he has committed the crime because he is “unable to control his impulses” as a result of mental disease (“Insanity Defense” 1). Similarly, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” viewed the old man’s “pale blue eye, with a film over it” with hatred (Poe 1). When the old man’s eye looked upon the narrator, he would uncontrollably increase in fury and anger. This led the narrator to “[make] up [his] mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid [him]self of the eye forever” (Poe 1).
All of his deranged actions validate his madness. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is discernibly a madman. His motives, actions, and thoughts prove his insanity. The definition of insanity fits the narrator to a T. His psychosis controlled his behaviors and pushed him into chopping up another human being and disposing the pieces like
Firstly, he killed the old man because of his eye. Additionally , he claimed that he kept hearing the heartbeat when the old man was dead. In closing, he had no control over himself. The difference between a sane person and an insane person is how they think and act. The narrator is obviously insane since he acted easy and normal in situations that are expected to be handled differently, like the time the policemen came to question him about the noises coming out of the house.
The author writes, “The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them.” (Poe, 1843) This text describes that the killer has a mental disorder. Poe also writes, “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, “dissemble no more” I admit the deed! - tear up the planks - here, here!
Ultimately it comes down to this, insane or sane? Insane would be the perfect way of describing a person being mad, killing a man for no reason, and laughing at a horrifying death. After having the narrator showing so many things to prove he is insane rather than sane is pretty clear. The author allows a visual understanding of the narrator in the “Tell Tale Heart” from having many specific details about his point of view.
Modern artists today generally use images of physical and mental illness in literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, both short stories show the usage of illness, madness, and fear. The narrators in both stories try to convince the readers that the characters are physically and mentally ill. Edgar Allen Poe creates these vivid characters which successfully assist the building of plot and ideas. Poe demonstrates how a person’s inner turmoil and terror can lead to insanity through illustrative language.
Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.
But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife … I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan” (Poe). This is very similar in presentation to how The Tale-Tale Heart presents it, not that big of a deal that you did the act. The narrator kills his wife without a second thought because he wanted to kill the cat, but what I take from it is that he does not care about his wife enough that killing her does not mean anything to him, and that is insanity. In The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator does a very similar thing to what happens in The Black Cat, kills someone with no feelings of remorse for a very arbitrary reason.
The Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843 is about a man who claims he is not insane but only nervous. In turn, he tells a story to defend his sanity, in which he confesses to have killed an old man. He claims that his ambition was neither passion nor greed for money, but actually uneasiness of the old man’s pale blue eyes. He continues to insist that he isn’t mad because of his calm and collected actions. Even though he is a murderer, he claims that his composed actions aren’t ones of a psychopath.