The Tell-Tale Heart
In the "Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe examines themes of sanity vs. madness
through and violence, mental imagery and confusion as well as repetition of thoughts for emphasis. The narrator possesses several qualities of mental instability that lead to his horrible crimes- nervousness, delusions of grandeur, violence and auditory hallucinations. These features of mental instability are repeated numerous times through out this story, one of Poe's shortest works.
The first and perhaps most obvious symptom of mental illness exhibited by the narrator is nervousness. This nervousness is apparent in the first line of the story: "True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad"?(Poe 354) The narrator seems nervous because he does not want the reader to think that he is mad. It is very important to him that the reader sees what effort he has put into the crime.
Thank God for Mental Illness
Microsoft Narrator
The "Japanese" narrator of My Japan.I find it interesting that the narrator feel the need to defend his sanity in the first line of the story, because the reader does not yet know the details of the story. We see this nervousness again on the eighth night as he is staring at the "vulture eye". (Poe356) He describes the beating of the heart, and he attributes it to the terror that the old man is feeling. He is in fact hearing the beating of his own heart. He says "I have told you that I am nervous: so I am"(Poe 356). In his nervousness, the sound of the beating heart "incited me to uncontrollable terror". (Poe 356) His nervousness that a neighbor may hear the sound urges him to kill the man. The fact that he attributes his own fear and nervousness to the old man once again...