Summary: Mental Illness Of The Narrator In Tell-Tale Heart

The narrator in Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe has some sort of mental illness that causes him to become very paranoid, psychopath behavior and have a tendency to become very obsessive about something that interests him or drive him insane. In this case it was very unfortunate for the old man that the narrator decided to help out because there was something about the old man’s left eye that made the narrator change in a very odd behavior and led him to commit first degree murder.

Based on California State law although the narrator committed a serious crime the likely chance of him being punished or having no charges being pressed against him can go either way.

The First, mental illness that is widely known in this short story is Schizophrenia a mental illness that can last for a very long time and it involves odd emotions and behavior, thoughts become more complicated, delusion, and etc. In short there are many signs of his illness throughout the short story for example, “it grew louder-louder-louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled.

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Was it possible they heard it not?”. During this part of the story the narrator has already kept the body parts under the floorboards of the house but, as he allowed the police officers to enter his home to chat he starts to hallucinate one common symptom of Schizophrenia. At this point, that's when the beating noises became louder and more distinctive. The narrator realizes the beating was coming from underneath the floorboard where the old man’s remains were.

His paranoia begins to escalate and he becomes more nervous. “They heard!- They suspected! They knew!- they were making a mockery of my horror!”. In this example, as the officers are chatting with one another laughing and throwing hand gestures the narrator reacts to this in a very nervous manner and slowly he goes insane thinking to himself did the officer finally find out. His assumption was the officers were pretending or clueless about the crime but in reality what narrator didn’t realizewas the officers were definitely clueless and his hypersensitivity toward the officers was what caused this. Another example, “I kept still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle”. This is another quote in the story that also references another symptom of Schizophrenia called catatonic behavior which affects a person’s ability from moving normally and in this scene The narrator was prepared to end the old man’s life when he suddenly awoke from slumber.

The Second, mental illness is obsessive compulsive disorder which affects a person mentally with their obsessions and compulsions leading to many triggers like thoughts, images, and intense feelings.