Insanity: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to be sane is in fact trying to get away with the punishment for the crime that he readily admits by faking insanity through ironic means.

Edgar Allan Poe, the writer himself is the one who establishes the irony in this story, not the narrator because the latter seems to be completely insensible about the ironic component of his monologue. The conventional critical analysis of "The Tell-Tale Heart" might engage the story from the point of view that the narrator's attempt to prove his sanity might be an exercise in irony. Irony, in today’s world, can be easily misinterpreted by most of us because we tend to get confused with it taking it like nothing as literary as a comedown of an unintended coincidence.

One of the fascinating aspects of this story is that it remains indistinguishable to whom the narrator is addressing his appeal to be found sane. It may be the police; or more likely a judge; or can also be the warden of the prison; or even a group of people gathered to witness him hung up during ...

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Works Cited

Baraban, Elena. "The Motive for Murder in "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe." Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. 58.2 (2004): 47-62. Print.

Gargano, James W. ‘‘The Theme of Time in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’’’ Studies in Short Fiction 5.4 (1967): 378-382. Print

Poe, Edgar A. "The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.” University of Virginia, 2009. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. .

Tresch, John. “The Potent magic of Verisimilitude: Edgar Allan Poe within the Mechanical Age” The British Journal for the History of Science 30.3 (1997): 257-290. Print.

Tucker, B.D. “The Tell Tale Heart” and the “Evil Eye”. The Southern Literary Journal 13.2 (1981):92-98. Print.

Cleman, John. “Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense”. American Literature 63.4 (1991): 623-640. Print.