To Kill A Madman Sparknotes

The story revolves around a person that murders their elderly neighbor because of his eye. The neighbor has a light blue eye that the murderer believes is the eye of a vulture with a film or vail over it. He thinks that the eye is evil and would get a bad feeling whenever the old man would look at him, so he took care of this by murdering the neighbor who he has admitted to caring about. From the beginning of the story the murderer who is also the narrator of this story does not want anyone to think that he is “mad” he thinks that anyone else would have done the same thing if they were in his situation. Which is completely delusional, which as stated above is one of the signs of paranoid schizophrenia. Even though murder would never be considered by a large part of

You should have seen how wisely I proceeded” According to the narrator/murderer the definition of a madman is someone who doesn’t know anything. It is someone who does not understand how the world works and cannot accomplish the simplest of tasks. Since he was able to achieve his goal of murder he believes that he is not crazy, if he didn’t do it well or if he wouldn’t have achieved his goal of murder then he would consider himself crazy. This goes back to his delusions of what a mad man really is, the definition of mad is mentally deranged which the narrator seems to be since he does not understand at the beginning that what he has done is wrong and that he should not be proud of murdering the old man. He seems proud of what he did and towards the end of the story he is very condescending when he brings the police men into the room that he recently murdered the man in and is talking to them like nothing has happened. Which condescension is another sign of paranoid schizophrenia. By cutting up the body and placing it under the floor boards there is no evidence of the murder that recently took place and so he thinks that there is no way that anyone could find out about