Why does Edgar Allen Poe use insanity in “The Tell Tale Heart”?
When the police visit, the narrator can barely contain himself and begins to hear the beating of (what he thinks is) the old man’s heart that he has supposedly buried underneath boards in his floor. Poe masterfully uses detail during this scene to put us into the psychotic mind of the narrator. The reader feels what the narrator is feeling as his heart beats quicker and quicker from nervousness and tension. Poe then ends the story by having his narrator shout that he cannot take it anymore and that the old man’s heart is buried beneath the floor. The insanity that inflicts the main characters in these stories drives them to commit the acts that they do. For example, it is the madness of the narrator in Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” that allows him to murder his beloved employer. Poe therefore uses insanity in his stories to drive his characters to heinous endings that elevate his stories to the epitome of Gothic literature. The Tell Tale Heart One prominent example of the importance of i
