The Tell-Tale Heart: Brief Psychotic Disorder

First, Poe suggests the narrator is insane by his assertions of sanity. For example, the narrator declares because he planned the murder so expertly he could not be insane. He says, "Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what

In Poe’s works each of these characters are dealing with the same issues with the case of murder. The first being The Tell Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher with hyperacusis which is the sensitivity to certain frequency and volume ranges. In these short stories both of these characters claims to hear sounds coming from the tombs of the ones they murder, which eventually grows louder until it becomes almost unbearable. In The Tell Tale Heart the question raises of whether the narrator was hearing other sounds that sound like a heartbeat, his own heartbeat or that of the old man, which could have also been false perception of sound. “He evidently suffers from distortions of perception (chiefly auditory hallucinations) and what are

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

Although schizophrenia seems like a rare illness, there are an estimated 1.5 million people in the United States alone who suffer from this disorder (“Schizophrenia” 3). The most common form of this mental illness is paranoid schizophrenia, which is defined as a chronic mental illness in which a person loses touch with reality and is preoccupied with delusions (“Mental Health and Schizophrenia” 5). Symptoms of this disorder include auditory hallucinations, delusions, anxiety, anger, emotional distance, violence, argumentativeness, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and self-important or condescending manner. Auditory hallucinations are when one hears sounds, usually voices, that are not real. The voices will give criticisms, insults, and commands (“Paranoid Schizophrenia” 5). Delusions are false beliefs that one refuses to give up despite being proved wrong with facts, a very common one being that someone is out to get the person (“Mental Health and Schizophrenia” 13). However, one could also have delusions of grandeur, which are false impressions of one’s own importance. Delusions can lead to aggression or violence if one believes they must defend themselves against those who want to cause them harm (“Paranoid Schizophrenia” 4). The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” clearly has paranoid schizophrenia because he displays the symptoms of auditory hallucinations, delusions, violence or aggression, and anxiety.

It is this insistent lucidity that tips off the reader to his insanity".(Kesterson-78) With the stories being so similar it is imperative for Poe to create subtle differences that make the two tales able to stand on their own. The inner struggle of this second character develops much more quickly in this story. His whole torment happens within one day of the actual murder. This would lead the reader to believe that this man is one of weaker will and with more morality then the previously mentioned character. In fact the man hears the beating of the heart before he actually kills the old man, "the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!-do you mark me well".(Poe-137) The beating of the heart continues after the murder and it is then that Poe investigates another aspect of inner struggle. By making the police come to scene the man is forced into immediate confrontation. Even though he is sure that there was no trace of the sin committed, his mental torture was so agonizing, and apparent, he found it impossible to maintain his secret any longer. Poe uses the quick turn of event to show how insane the actual character was and to show that he was long in need of help. However it is the man's personal struggle that makes

The Sociopathic Style. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.) The narrator from Tell Tale Heart has a tendency of having no remorse or guilt for doing bad and evil things. For example, when the narrator states in the story that he likes and enjoys the old man, the narrator kills the poor old man, just because of that one strange, and odd evil eye.

Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The entire story is a confession of a brutal murder with no rational motive. The narrator repeatedly tries to convince the audience he hasn’t gone mad though his actions prove otherwise. To him his nervousness sharpens his senses and allows him to hear things from heaven Earth and hell. The narrator planned to kill his roommate whom had never wronged him and had loved dearly because he felt his pale blue eye was tormenting him. The narrator claims “his eye resembles that of a vulture.” The madman then goes on to explain how when the eye is on him his blood turns cold, and he has to get rid of the eye forever. He sneaks into his roommate’s room for seven nights at midnights and shines a

1. He is not a reliable narrator because he is insane. Though he repeatedly states that he is sane, the reader suspects otherwise from his bizarre reasoning, behavior, and speech. ‘‘True—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?'' The reader realizes through Poe’s description of the narrator’s extreme nervousness that the protagonist has in fact descended into madness, as anxiety is a common symptom of insanity. He apparently suffers from some form of paranoia. Besides, the narrator claims that he loves the old man and has no motive for the murder other than his growing dislike of a cloudy film over one of the old man’s eyes. His madness becomes

Poe indicates through the occurrence of the events that the narrator has descended into madness. As his guilt constantly haunts him, the narrator is unable to hide it any longer, and confesses everything to the authorities, which ruins his seemingly “perfect crime.” Here, his sanity is in question, as no man of sound mind would openly confess his evil doings to the authorities. The fact that he narrates his crime to prove that he is sane, proves that he is in fact, insane (Holland).

Would consider a guy with a mental disease mad or sane? Most people would consider that person mad? What if he kills a guy over an eyeball. What about then, is he mad? Well the narrator in the “Tell Tale Heart” has a mental disease and he does kill a guy over an eyeball. So, mad or sane?

Tell me, would you kill a person because his eye happened to annoy you? In Edgar Allen Poe's story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," that is precisely what the narrator does. He is insane, and he is not to be trusted with the information he is presenting based on things he does or hears. "I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell" (1).

Certain type of people have delusions. These could be a delusion of grandeur, a delusion of popularity, or a delusion that something might be wrong with them. The reader may even have a few lying beneath the surface; waiting to come out and play. These delusions are usually simple things that hardly affect the way we perceive the world, and they are often written off as overthinking and simply ignored by the person having them. However, some let their delusions take ahold of their very being.

Insanity, the true definition is doing something over and over again expecting the same result. It is a thing, that can affect a person and make them slightly off their rocker. The landlady seems like a sweet old lady until we find out that she takes her victims and stuffs them in her free time. While the narrator from the “Tell-Tale Heart” does nothing like this. He only kills his victim, and they may both kill someone, but the landlady kills multiple people. They may both be insane but the landlady is more so, because she poisons as well as stuffs her victims, kills more people than the narrator, and she keeps trophies of the people she kills and leaves them out in the rooms that they stayed in.

The next trick used in this story to make it scary was the beating of the mans heart once he woke up and came to be suspicious that someone was in the room with him. The speaker describes the beating of the heart as "so strange a noise as [it] excited me to uncontrollable terror" (Poe, 3). At this point the reader may think that it is the conscious of the speaker that is really bothering him rather than the mans heartbeat. Every time the speaker refers to the heartbeat he says that it keeps getting louder and louder. One can come to the assumption that at this point the speaker is only looking for reasons to support his killing a man. And in fact it is the beating of the mans heart that drove the speaker/killer to confessing about what he has done and showing the police where the body was.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe is a freighting story about a man who is clinically insane. Insanity is something no person wants to admit too, but most of the time people do not even know they are going insane. To them everyone else is Acting weird and is out to get them. In Poe’s short story there are many ways to interpret why the man kills. Behind every interpretation there is always a reason, being able to prove that reason is what’s important. Proving he’s insane, why he killed the man, and why he turned himself in is what’s most important in this story.