If you ask me, I will say that I think Poe's narrator brings up a very good point. I am nervous as well, I am actually a very anxious person, I'm definitely a worrier. And I'm not crazy. I mean I am not feeling inspired to plot any murder for any reason, but for the sake of it, I can see how nervousness and madness are unrelated. And for other reasons, my argument stands that Poe's narrator indeed is not mad.
It's been said that beginning the story with the word 'True' is an admission of guilt. I don't feel that there is any reason to argue that, and his further admission that he is not mad could be simply an honest, guilty admission that he is not innocent or guilty by reason of insanity.
I've also heard the rumor that Poe suffered from some level of monoxide poisoning, a side effect of which is heightened senses similar to what Poe describes in the story. The poisoning theory also explains why Poe's facial features look the way they do in some of his photographs. Richmond is surely a place where something like this could happen.
He says he is patient, maybe that is fair to say. I am in no position to say what constitutes madness, but I could believe that it would exist in the form of patience or impatience. So I don't believe that his level of patience is evidence of anything here.
Whatever the problem here is, we know that Poe's narrator does not want anyone to label him 'mad'. He has his reasons. (Or she. The narrator could be a female and reverse interpretation of Poe's idea of the death of a beautiful woman).
The narrator needs a good lawyer and some counseling.
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2 comments:
I agree with his narrator not being mad. Perhaps Poe is writing against the idea of madness--trying to show how emotions one feels can not be linked with madness. However, the narrator did kill the man...so we can consider the narrator slightly unhinged. I honestly don't know how I feel about the narrator's sanity. Part of me thinks "homeboy killed a man because of his eye" while the other part of me tries to find ways around the murder and see how he could possibly not be mad. Figuring this out could be madness in itself so perhaps I shall stop talking. Moving right along, I like the idea of the "death of a beautiful woman in reverse" I have never thought about that before but I could see how this could work in "The Tell Tale Heart". Kudos to pointing that out, it makes one re-think the narrator's gender when re-reading the story.
I disagree. I believe that Poe's narrator is mad, but not in the same way we perceive it today...babbling incoherently and rocking to and fro. It is a sort of madness which is dangerous. If anyone has read Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (good quick trash reading if you want it), then you know that Lady Audley considers herself to be mad. However, many symptoms of her mother's "madness" and her own are symptoms of what we would call post-pardem depression. Also, she is cold and calculating toward other characters. She is mad in the same way that, perhaps, Hannibal Lecter would be. Bad example, I know, but the best I can come up with for the kind of crazy I see.
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