Schizophrenia In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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Anyone who reads The Tell-Tale Heart, one of the most acclaimed short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, finishes it with the certainty that the main character lost his mind completely. Seeing him trying desperately to convince the reader that he is not insane only affirms the suspicion that he has a mental disease. When one analyses the narrative carefully, it is possible to see that he may have schizophrenia.
Poe is one of the most famous American authors, and his works are known for their mysterious and dark style. The story analyzed on the essay, The Tell-Tale Heart, is about a guy who decides to murder an old man to get rid of his pale blue eye. It is narrated by the killer, who tells why he decided to do this, how he proceeded and why he ended …show more content…

It can be either an extremely paralysis of the muscles of one’s body or a hyperactivity conduct (The Free Dictionary), and this man presents both actions. The first time was when he was getting ready to kill the old man, and this one woke up: “I kept still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle” (Poe, p. 204). The other occasion was by the end of the story, when he was already talking to the policemen: “I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides […] I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards” (Poe, p. 206). This behaviors can be described as catatonic, as they were inspired by his imagination – on the first case, the need of murder because of a pale blue eye; the second one, to stop an imaginary noise.
It is obvious that the main character of The Tell-Tale Heart shows signs of having a mental disease, and it could be schizophrenia. He hallucinates when hearing things that are impossible to be heard; and has actions that can be described as being catatonic. It does not matter how long he tries to prove himself not to be mental, because any sane person would hear his arguments and think that he actually

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