The Tell Tale Heart Insanity Essay

Cortney Leigh
Mrs. Wenshau
English 11
Block 1
2/10/23

Obsession; the Food of Insanity
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator is insane. Although there are a multitude of reasons as to why he is insane, one of the most prominent reasons is because the narrator is entirely incapable of telling right from wrong. From the beginning of the story, the narrator explains that his motive behind killing the old man is because he is haunted by the old man’s vulture-like eye. Essentially, the narrator justifies killing the old man by putting the blame onto the harrowing eyeball. It is entirely bizarre to kill someone over an eyeball. This shows that the narrator’s internal compass to discern right from wrong is flawed. Moreover, the delusional narrator is also pleasantly amused by inducing the old man’s terror. On the eighth night of peering into the old man’s room, the narrator startles the old man, causing him to exude groans of utter horror with which

Despite sympathizing and relating to the old man’s fear, the narrator still finds amusement in haunting the old man at the dead of night. This attests that the narrator cannot distinguish right from wrong because he does not grasp that what he is doing to the old man is immoral. He is invoking terror for the benefit of his own deranged addiction to the daunting eyeball. Furthermore, the narrator proves once again that he cannot tell right from wrong when he not only takes the old man’s life, but also goes on to describe how immensely prideful he is in how swiftly he did so. Committing an act of murder is no generous deed, yet the narrator consequentially flatters himself for killing and discarding the old man in a supremely clean manner. Taking pride in killing someone is a tell-tale sign that someone is unable to distinguish that what their doing is corrupt. Nevertheless, besides being incapable of distinguishing right