The Maladies in Poe's Short Stories

Paper Summary:

Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories about maladies of being insane. These include "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Ligeia", and "The Fall of the House of Usher". The paper analyzes these short stories and shows how Edgar Allan Poe used the theme of sanity and insanity throughout these three stories with suspense and trauma building the story until the reader must decide whether the person is actually sane or insane.

From the Paper:

""I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever" (Poe 1). Sounds like a crazy man living with paranoia that drives the person to do something insane like murdering the man because of his evil eye. Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories about maladies of being insane. These include The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Analyzing these short stories will show that Edgar Allan Poe used the theme of sanity and insanity throughout these three stories with suspense and trauma building the story until the reader must decide whether the person is actually sane or insane. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" Poe guides the reader through the story with the statement from the narrator that he could not be insane. "True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why...""

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