If someone makes a bad choice, does it matter if they are sane or insane? It depends on the evidence and how the reader portrays the definition of "sane"in the Tell Tale Heart. The narrator’s emotions are appropriate for his given situations. Some would say that being sane is to "normal" and everyone can be "normal" being insane is the only reason why he killed the old man. How could he be insane if he did so many sane and normal things? The narrator in Tell Tale Heart is sane, he took the time and effort to kill the old man. The eye was making him mad so to stay sane he had to get rid of the eye. He said the eye was always stairing at him and was making him go insane so to stay sain he had to get ride of the eye. The narrator had no other …show more content…
Before the narrator planned his attack he sane, “He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold...” (2). If you don’t like someone's physical trait it is normal to ignore it or stay away from them and the narrator is not normal he clearly shows his emotions are above and beyond what is “normal” because of how scared he got when someone looked at him. Some readers take the position that the narrator has something wrong with him. This stance fails to consider the reasoning why the author might be insane. If he was insane why would he pay attention so close to details. "I then took up three pieces of wood from the flooring, and placed his body parts under the room. I then replaced the wooden boards so well that no human eye not even his could have seen anything wrong". In summarization reader isn't looking at his thinking through the whole story. To sum up, the narrator is sane in the Tell-Tale Heart. He knows what he’s doing was wrong. one could only imagine that he is insane. this seems plausible at first, but after analyzing all the data you can clearly see he is sane. You always see how when someone does something evil like this that they have a mental disorder because something must be wrong with the narrator to do something this cruel to another
Despite of this information, how he is a calculated killed, in paragraph 2 it reads,” Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.” A person who is mentally insane can have uncomfortable behaviors and this information shows that he had nothing against the old man. Therefore, the narrator acted on impulsive behavior and can be described as mentally
Moreover, the diction of the narrator and his repeated pleas to the reader to believe this thought, while not truly convincing, serve as a means to support his case. He asks, ”How, then, am I mad?” and “but why will you say that I am mad?” Beyond what could be considered a maniacal monologue, the narrator’s creepy fascination with the old man’s eye further distinguishes mental illness. What is described as “a pale blue eye, with a film over it” is, in all probability, a cataract, which is not nearly as evil as
Not knowing he is going mad. In ' The Tell Tale Heart' the man has an
In the first place, I fathom the narrator is insane because he is proven ill. For instance, there are many clues throughout “The Tell Tale Heart” that despite the
How can we justify a man is mad or not? A man may talk like a wise man, and yet act like a mad man. In Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator depicted a story that he killed the old man because of the old man’s so-call "evil eye" which made his blood run cold. Althought the narrator tried to persuade the reader that he was normal, several pieces of evidence of confusing illusion and reality adequately indicates his madness and absurdity. By examining his behaviour and mind, I will expound his madness thoroughly.
Is the narrator of “The Tell Tale Heart” sane or insane? “Sanity: a sound of mind; not mad or mentally ill (Webster Dictionary pg. 862).” In the short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” the narrator tries to convince the audience that he is sane; he says “... but why will you say that I am mad (Poe pg. 202).” I believe that the narrator is sane. He tries to prove that he is sane throughout the entire short story that he is not mad. For example, he was very wary during the seven days that he stalked the old man, he felt an intense amount of guilt, and that he made this brilliant plan of murder.
In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator begins by informing the reader that while he is nervous, he is not mad. Though the narrator is a murderer, he is not so without reason. The story then tells us how the narrator murdered a neighbor, not for money or out of hatred, but because of the neighbor’s pale blue eye. Though the man is dear to him, the narrator was struck by the idea of killing the man, and thus his blue eye, and could not shake the idea. Once the thought of killing the man entered him, he had no choice but act on it. Therefore, the narrator nightly observed the man while he slept for a week; on the eighth night the narrator carefully and stealthily crept into the neighbor’s room to murder him. He is meticulous in his actions, taking an entire hour to enter the room, but the man wakes up and cries out. The narrator pauses, waiting for the man to fall back asleep, but the man does not; the neighbor is terrified and cannot control the pounding of his heart. As the sound of the man’s heartbeat increases, the narrator attacks, dropping a bead on top of the man, killing him. The narrator then dismembers the body, hides the pieces under the floorboards, and cleans up before the police arrive. The narrator greets the police officers warmly and shows them around the house. He is overly confident that his crime is undetectable, almost to the point of arrogance. The narrator loses his nerve, however, when he hears the low thump of...
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 about this. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded. . . " i.e. a. By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is indeed deranged.
The Tell-Tale Heart puts forward an idea that ego can alter our perceptions resulting in madness because it will destroy accurate understanding. “The narrators insanity is figured forth in terms of the murder of reason and moral sense and an utter breakdown of the three aspects of the human identity…”(Edward.) The absurdity of this murderer being sane is clear to read.
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.
Upon reading a little bit into the story the reader finds that the narrator likes the old man or rather doesn’t having anything against him, except for his eye. The pale blue eye was the focus point for his rage he hates but not the old man. How can anyone just hate someone’s eye without being mentally unstable? “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a...
To start off, the man is insane because the old man’s eye bothered him so much. At this this point of the story, the narrator tells the
The fixation on the old man's vulture-like eye forces the narrator to concoct a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" (34). The narrator begins his tale of betrayal by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly surmises the narrator indeed is out of control. The fact that the old man's eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must search for justification to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own unreasonable fear of the eye.
As the story begins the narrator tries to convince the reader that he is not insane. This goes on throughout the story. He says he suffers from over-acuteness. “And have I not told you that what you mist...
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.