Satire and Sanity on Trial in My Favorite Murder

Prompt 5: Evidence a lawyer might use to prove the narrator is mad.

In Bierce’s “My Favorite Murder,” the narrator’s tale could definitely be used to show that the defendant is out of his mind. He tells about how he murdered his own uncle with such relish and matter-of-fact complacency that one can have no other option but to conclude that he has lost his reason. The narrator’s character is grotesque yet darkly humorous as though he delighted in being a kind of innocent villain. He tells his own story about his own violent and unapologetic acts, as though he were describing some modest sports victory.

Throughout the story he tells, there are many details that indicate the narrator’s disturbed mind. First, his lack of remorse is the big red flag: he casually recounts the brutal murder of his uncle and the elaborate, theatrical manner in which he stages it, as though it were almost a trifle. His obvious detachment from the reality of his violence, where he describes the murder in a methodical, gleeful way, suggests a severe disconnection from typical human understanding, empathy, sociality, and morality. The narrator’s delight in “the superior quality of screams” (Bierce, p. 796) and satisfaction in prolonging his uncle’s suffering would surely be used by a lawyer as evidence of his insanity and psychopathy?.

The narrator also displays a convoluted logic in justifying his actions as part of “artistic atrocity” (Bierce, p. 797). It shows his own warped perception of what he has done as something marvelous rather than as something horrifying. His amusement at describing the sequence of violent acts involving a ram attacking his uncle shows he has no sense of the seriousness of murder—if, at this point, he can even be taken seriously himself. His proud membership in the “Knights of Murder” adds more delusion to his tale. A lawyer could easily point to this as evidence of madness.