Edgar Allan Poe Mental Illness

Edgar Allan Poe is an American writer who is very famous for his short stories and poems. His works usually consists of mystery and he is considered to be having detective fiction genre, which in future develops into science fiction genre. Poe had a past that affected his work immensely. Most of his works are related to either illnesses or disputes between the characters. His parents had died when he was young. Two people adopted him, but he had disputes with his adopted father and had gone through some rough time. He started to write poetry in the beginning. He had switched his focus to prose. His works had represented many mental illnesses that had existed during that time. Brett Zimmerman has mentions that, “These scholarly achievements are reflected occasionally in Poe's writings, where we certainly find some references to rhetoric and oratory.” Many of his work reflect on his past and many of his works are similar to each other not only due to the basis of the characters but also due to the fact that Poe mostly wrote mystery short stories and his stories show some truth about human nature.
The two works that have very similar ideas are “Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”.
In these works of his, he focus on the illness that the main characters have. Both of the main characters from both of the short stories have the same problem; they both had dealt with the hatred of the eye of someone. All of these illness and hatred can be related to Poe’s personal life when he was adopted and he had disputes with his adopted father many times. These main characters have some pity towards the sins that they have committed. Reader of these two stories can easily assume that there was a reason behind their mental illness. The main characters must have gone through some rough times, which caused their brains to function in an abnormal
way. Additionally, considering the similarities between these works, there are many differences. The story line is the same, but the plot and the characters are different. In “Tell Tale Heart”, Poe starts off with the character proving his point by stating that he was not ill. From the beginning, it creates a doubt in the reader’s mind about the main character’s illness. In “The Black Cat”, there are only few mentions about the illness of the main character. It also mostly focuses on the behavior of the main character. Ann V Bliss mentions the masculinity of the main character and its development after his marriage, “While the narrator’s marriage conventionally establishes his masculinity, he fails to fully inhabit the role of husband.” Through these works of Poe, it seems that there are different level of illness. Different readers can interpret Poe’s work differently. His main characters’ actions could be very harmful but there is a similarity between all humans and his main characters’. Magdalen Wing-chi Ki has mentioned in one of the essays, “Many of his stories illustrate the biblical truths that humans love to impose their views on others and fail to notice the plank in their own eyes.” The similarity is that humans tend to only think about bad deeds, bad actions, but mostly never act upon their thoughts. Through the characters’ actions, it is obvious that they area considered ill mannered in the society. Everyone is ill mannered because everyone has thought about tiniest sins in their lives.