Theme Of Grotesque In The Tell Tale Heart - 987 Words

The definition of madness is the state of being mentally ill, especially severely. There are a great number of connections between the Gothic genre and the state of madness, such as the obsession with death and the deceased, as well as an infatuation with the grotesque. The mad often claim to witness supernatural phenomenon which are continuously depicted within the Gothic genre. With such a copious amount of connections it is not difficult to imagine that some if not most Gothic characters act as though they are mad. In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allan Poe Gothic elements are used to convey the madness of the narrator to the reader. The grotesque and an unreliable narrator appear which shows that â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† can be†¦show more content†¦A sane man would feel very guilty after murdering an old man over something as insignificant as the appearance of one of his eyes. Retelling such a despicable act would be very difficult for a sane perpet rator and would likely not come in out in such vividly grotesque detail. In this story, the Gothic element of the grotesque shows how the narrator makes terrible decisions with terrible consequences and how he does not feel guilty for killing the old man. Both of these characteristics point strongly to the narrator being a madman. Secondly, the narrator of â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† is a man who not only claims to have a mental disease, but also kills an old man due to his gross eye. Is a mentally ill murderer a narrator who is worthy of the reader’s trust? â€Å"The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.† (1) The disease that the narrator references in this quotation is a mental disorder. The narrator describes a sharpening of the senses and acute hearing. These two symptoms paired with the fact that he hears the old man’s heartbeat start to become louder and louder after killing and decapitating him, point to schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a disorder caused by an overload of sensory data, it often causes its sufferers to hear voices and noises that are not real. This could easily explain theShow MoreRelatedThe Grotesque In Gothic Literature : The Characteristics Of Gothic Literature1600 Words   |  7 PagesT he grotesque in gothic is usually the behavior of a man (or women,) who battle with an internal conflict and they are also, usually sick. When an individual reads gothic stories, one can sometimes miss-interpret what they have read. It is common knowledge that when we are younger we understand things differently from when we grot be adults. 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The deaths