Insanity In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

“ I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” (Poe) This is a quote from Edgar Allen Poe himself. His writings were that of horror, death and a mix of multiple other genres of stories. While the narrator of the Tell-Tale Heart tries to persuade his readers that he isn’t insane, there is many examples from the story that help prove that I believe he is insane. From the story he is, delusional, obsessive, and he is very methodical; all of which are evidence of his insane nature as a person. Starting with the narrator’s delusion the story begins so… The narrator of Tell-Tale Heart explains to the readers how this old man he lives with is a generous and good-natured person. About a paragraph into the story, the narrator starts explaining, emphasizing, how harsh and bad the watchful eye of the old mans is. Its almost like the eye is constantly judging the narrator and disapproves of his actions as a person. A quote from the story is read so: “One of his eyes [The old man] resembled that of a vulture” (Poe 1). The narrator HATES the look of the eye! The nature of the look makes him mad and is making this whole plan to kill the old man just from the look of his eye. With his

A big part of his plan is being extremely slow and quiet. One of his big spots is when he says: “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening” (Poe 1). Each night when the narrator watches the old man, stated in the paragraph above, he would open the door ever so slowly as not to wake him. Not just with the door, but also with the lantern he had. The narrator would open “the lantern cautiously – oh so cautiously, cautiously” (Poe 1). At how meticulous the narrator is, is mind-bottling because he takes all this time to spy on the man that’s been so generous to the narrator. The whole story is a slow domino effect of the narrator slowly losing his mind and getting angrier with the old