Madness In The Tell Tale Heart

Born in Boston in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential American writers of his age. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1849 and, even though he dedicated himself to both fiction and poetry, he is mainly remembered for his revolutionary novels.

Although Poe’s short stories are considered gothic stories, they go beyond the convention of this genre. In fact, while in most of the gothic stories mystery comes from the outside world, in Poe’s stories the causes of horror and misfortunes spring from the mind of the characters themselves and are the result of the complex nature of man.
In fact, by using an inner and limited point of view, the writer analyses in depth the psychology of the perverse and contradictory protagonists of his stories and exposes a kind of madness that induces readers to think of them as unreliable narrators.
For instance, in works such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” , the narrators attempt to prove their sanity providing a rational explanation of their actions and portraying their crimes as excusable. However, their inability to question their own abnormal behaviour, as well as their irrational fixations, are signs of their lack of sanity.
This aspect is evident in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the story of a man who murders an old man he lives with and hides the dismembered pieces of his corpse under his bedroom’s floor. However, when the police question him about the scream heard by a neighbour, he is pervaded by such a sense