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Poe establishes at this point how in the viewpoint of an insane individual, the line distinguishing insanity from rational thinking becomes blurry. Indeed, the Mad Man's illusion that he is not insane and was fortunate to experience a "sharpening of the senses" was one way of illustrating this blurring of distinction between illusion and reality, sanity and insanity. The Mad Man did not realize that murdering the old man because of his blue eye is irrational; for him, the threatening feeling that he experiences whenever he sees the blue eye is reason enough for him to kill the eyes' owner, who is the old man. In this example, his illusion is that the blue eye is watching and threatening him, while the reality is that he killed the old man because of this perceived threat.
The emotional instability that the Mad Man experienced became evident as the story draws to a close. Though he tries to demonstrate sanity by providing a detailed and objective narration of the manner in which he killed the old man, the Mad Man betrayed himself as he sought to "eliminate" just the source of his unsettling feeling -- the blue eyes, and not the old man:
It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with...
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
This passage revealed the truth about the Mad Man's true condition. He is not only losing control of his own mind and emotions, he is also losing control over the direction of his narration. Gradually, his insanity is laid bare for the readers to witness. Gradually, his projection of a rational-thinking individual is dissolving to give way to a confused person, who wants to take control of his self and environment by eliminating the things and people who he feels are threatening to him. It is through this crucial moment that the Mad Man succumbed to his insanity, and allowed himself to commit murder. Gone was the rational individual, and the unstable, highly-emotional Mad Man finally takes over, revealing his murder and insanity.
Edgar Allan Poe as seen through the lens of Hitchcock Several authors have explored the aesthetic relationship between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock, particularly writers like Dennis Perry and Donald Spoto among others. Although Poe has had major influence on many artists, (with Hitchcock demonstrating many of Poe's influences and gaining worldwide recognition for it) few have truly attempted to understand Poe. The only one who seems to have
Role of Madness in Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of Terror" This paper will explore the role of madness in three of Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of Terror," specifically "The Tell-Tale Heart," first published in the Pioneer of Boston in January of 1843 and edited by the American poet James Russell Lowell; "The Cask of Amontillado," first published in Godey's Lady Book of Philadelphia in November of 1846, a highly popular periodical
Tell-Tale Heart The Reflection of the Soul in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" appeared a decade after Gogol's "Diary of a Madman" in Russia and twenty years before Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, whose protagonist essentially become the archetypal anti-hero of modern literature. Between the American and the Russian is the whole continent of Europe, and it stands to reason that while on both sides of the continent literary characters
Even the narrator himself appears to be tensioned concerning his account on what happened in the murder room. Whereas his initial narrative is rather slow, he picks up the pace as the storyline progresses, showing that he is discomforted with the overall state of affairs. Although the narrator describes the chain of events leading to the murder and the crime itself as if he would transmit a confession, the fact
Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is about a young man who becomes mortally obsessed with an old man's creepy eye and ultimately kills him. Thomas Hardy's 1902 poem "The Man He Killed" is about a soldier who has become used to killing people just because they are on the other side of the war. Both of these narratives lend insight into guilt related to death, told
Poe's Tell-Tale Heart Historical Critique of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" To understand Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart," it may be beneficial to first understand the historical context within which it appears. Gothic horror was much in vogue with the popular reading public of the mid-19th century. Indeed, Poe's short story was published a decade after another story about a madman was published on the other side of the world in Russia -- "Diary