Insanity In Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale-Heart

A disturbing man explains his plans, “to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever”(Poe 1). In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale-Heart, a caretaker for an elderly man decides to take the life away from the man due to an absurd reason, one eye of the old man resembled a vulture, making the narrator uneasy. The story was written in the mid 1800’s by Edgar Allen Poe, who lived an interesting, and melancholy life that began in his early childhood. His father left the family when Poe was first born, and Poe became an orphan shortly after at age three when his mother passed away due to complications with tuberculous. Later, Poe was adopted by John and Frances Allan, and continued his young life in a comfortable environment.
The short story begins with a very nervous man as thoughts of murderer cross his mind. The story progressively gets worse as the caretaker takes bizarre actions, like haunting the elderly man at night. Throughout the short story many decisions made by the caretaker are profoundly illogical and lead to an interesting, yet disturbing story, leading to the reader to even question the sanity of the author. The caretaker in The Tell-Tale Heart most certainly shows more signs of insanity compared to Montresor, due to his irrational decisions. The caretaker’s irrational behavior throughout the short story displays the unbelievable amount of insanity inside this man.
This absurdity can be seen when the caretaker, everynight at midnight, would go inside the elderly man’s room to watch for the vulture eye to open while he slept, “Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in”(Poe 1). In this statement, the caretaker would slowly, to not disturb or wake the old man, thrust his head inside the bedroom to watch as he slept. The caretaker clearly shows a dark side of his personality from this action, and further progresses this through believing his action of watching someone sleep to be something funny and even amusing. In addition, the caretaker, after dismembering the corpse and hiding it, allows three officers to enter his house. Even though, the caretaker had just suffocated the elderly man, he decides to pull chairs up for the officers before realizing the beat from the old man’s heart could be heard, “It was a low, dull, quick sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” (Poe 3). The body of the elderly man was stone cold dead according to the caretaker, and had even been torn apart after that. Therefore, the beating of the old man’s heart was merely in the caretakers head, showing signs that the caretakers mind had most certainly turned into a crazy, mush of
tissue. In the end, the caretaker showed numerous signs of having a large amount of insanity, ultimately his behavior during the mist of night and his raved demeanor around the officers whilst his mind raced, show the immense amount of lunacy the caretaker had. The story shows the different side of writing that the talented Edgar Allen Poe was able to write, that not all main characters are forced to be the ‘good guy’, and some can take the role of the bad guy in the story. It is quite interesting how in the end, it almost seems like the murderer, or ‘bad guy’, will finally get away with the crimes committed. However, in the end, taking the life from the old man, simply for his cataracted eye, crazed the caretaker’s mind even more than before, which lead to his ultimate downfall.