Your very presence drives me over the edge. In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson, death is the central idea for both works. In Poe’s story, the narrator goes down the path of insanity over the eye of an old man and would plan the latter’s murder. In Dickinson’s poem, she uses death to portray the deterioration of her sanity. Poe and Dickinson both use the concept of hearing voices and death along with repetitive words and phrases to further develop their central idea of what it’s like for one to lose their sanity.
It is without a doubt that hearing voices preludes impending insanity. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator heard voices of some kind which is a sign of potential madness. He says, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.” (Poe 1) To hear things from a dimension and supposedly the inside of the earth is beyond absurd, therefore, the narrator is on the path to insanity. In “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson, she also picks up on non-existent voices during her descent into insanity. …show more content…
In Poe’s story, the narrator’s sanity was lost after killing the old man. As the murder takes place, he says, “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.” The narrator’s wicked smile after killing the old man displayed how mad the narrator had become. Throughout Dickinson’s poem, the supposed funeral is meant to portray her loss of sanity. The poem opens with the line, “I felt a funeral in my brain.” (Dickinson 1) By beginning the poem with said line, she lets the reader know she’s going through a certain loss, the loss of her sanity which the reader finds out about later on in the poem. In Poe and Dickinson’s works, they use death to symbolize the loss of sanity which itself is
It is without a doubt that hearing voices preludes impending insanity. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator heard voices of some kind which is a sign of potential madness. He says, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.” (Poe 1) To hear things from a dimension and supposedly the inside of the earth is beyond absurd, therefore, the narrator is on the path to insanity. In “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson, she also picks up on non-existent voices during her descent into insanity. …show more content…
In Poe’s story, the narrator’s sanity was lost after killing the old man. As the murder takes place, he says, “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.” The narrator’s wicked smile after killing the old man displayed how mad the narrator had become. Throughout Dickinson’s poem, the supposed funeral is meant to portray her loss of sanity. The poem opens with the line, “I felt a funeral in my brain.” (Dickinson 1) By beginning the poem with said line, she lets the reader know she’s going through a certain loss, the loss of her sanity which the reader finds out about later on in the poem. In Poe and Dickinson’s works, they use death to symbolize the loss of sanity which itself is