Gradual Insanity--Poe's Tell Tale Heart

The Tell Tale Heart

“Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.”—Edgar Alan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, page 1

In Edgar Alan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Hart, readers are taken for a ride when deep disdain becomes obsession and questionable insanity. The narrator, who is caretaker for an old man, explains that though the old man himself was indeed pleasant, his personal characteristics could not save him as one physical attribute stood out among the rest. The old man possessed a pale blue eye dressed with a chilling white film. In the excerpt provided above, you’ll see just how the narrator felt about the eye. He says that, “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man…” That is to say that, whenever he and the eye met each other’s glance, it chilled him, made him shutter. After which, you’ll find Poe plays on the idea by adding: “and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man.” This excerpt alone is very powerful as it explains just how that narrator came to what he believed to be a rational decision.

Each time he saw the eye, his blood ran cold and gradually he became so cold that the only conclusion he felt made perfect sense was to commit murder. He grew colder and colder against the old man, gradually he became more and more indifferent to him as a person. His scorn became less and less tolerable and just as degrees gradually drops—once an unbearable degree is reached, if no intervention or interference is available to those who feel it, lives are ultimately threatened and taken. Now faced with an intolerable distaste, the narrator falls upon this supposition-- The eye would not go away unless it ceased to open.
Throughout the story, the narrator then challenges his readers to distinguish the difference between genius and insanity. He reminds us that though his decision ‘may seem’ irrational, the steps taken to proceed with the action were, indeed, the steps of a clever man because “madmen know nothing.” By recreating the meticulous steps he took, resolutions he made, and nonchalant behavior towards the old man, he attempts to persuade readers into believing that he made a perfectly rational decision and he intelligently executed it. This idea is maintained until the story’s end. If somehow, someone still maintained his sanity throughout the story, the final scene proves otherwise. By the story's demising events,  the narrator's "brink" of insanity manifests into a full mental-breakdown once an unforgiving conscience works in the old man's defense. The quote provided stood as a premise for the entire recount. Insanity versus genius-- a theme that carried out until the story’s shocking end.