Insanity Modern movies and shows are known to overdramatize madmen and criminal activity, but is it really an over dramatization? There are many people in the world today that are insane to some degree. Sure, television shows just want the viewer to be entertained, but there is some truth to it. “Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and the book Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane are both stories about the mentally insane. Edgar Allan Poe writes about a man that kills another because he does not like the man’s eye. The other story is about a man that thinks he is studying psychopaths, but is instead the one the psychologists are studying. These stories tell of the mentally ill living in the world, comprehending their wrongdoings, and the severity
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From the “Tell Tale Heart”, the main character lived with the old man and would watch him sleep. The old man did not know of this unnerving habit so he had no problem with the guy until the night he was attacked: “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult” (Poe 303). They two were acquaintances. They both lived in the same world and saw each other everyday. The narrator went as far as to say that he loved the old man, but he ended up killing him and he still did not believe that he should be titled insane for his acts. In Shutter Island, the man believed that he was a very important part of society because he was going to a psych ward on an island to study the mentally insane. In the end, he learned that he was being studied because of disturbing things that he had done. The main character had to be told and convinced of the crimes that he had done by his “coworkers” (Lehane). The character acted like he was living a whole different “normal” life and not the messed up one that he had made for himself. Since there are still some insane people living in the everyday world they are not able to comprehend their feelings and severity of their …show more content…
Such as, in the story by Poe the main characters sole reason for killing the old man was because of his eye: “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” (Poe 303). So the man went on to brutally kill and mutilate the old man because of the guy’s vulture-like eye. He believed that he did such a good job of hiding the crime that he would never be caught, and he was happy about it. He did not know his actions were as wrong as they were. He just considered himself clever and intelligent. In the modern story, the main character murders his family and flat out does not know that he had committed that crime: “Gilligan says that people who kill others in the way that Andrew has don’t realize what they’re doing at the time” (Lehane). The man murdered his family and does not even know it. So, madmen cannot realize the severity and rashness of what they have done; therefore, they do not know that they are
From the “Tell Tale Heart”, the main character lived with the old man and would watch him sleep. The old man did not know of this unnerving habit so he had no problem with the guy until the night he was attacked: “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult” (Poe 303). They two were acquaintances. They both lived in the same world and saw each other everyday. The narrator went as far as to say that he loved the old man, but he ended up killing him and he still did not believe that he should be titled insane for his acts. In Shutter Island, the man believed that he was a very important part of society because he was going to a psych ward on an island to study the mentally insane. In the end, he learned that he was being studied because of disturbing things that he had done. The main character had to be told and convinced of the crimes that he had done by his “coworkers” (Lehane). The character acted like he was living a whole different “normal” life and not the messed up one that he had made for himself. Since there are still some insane people living in the everyday world they are not able to comprehend their feelings and severity of their …show more content…
Such as, in the story by Poe the main characters sole reason for killing the old man was because of his eye: “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” (Poe 303). So the man went on to brutally kill and mutilate the old man because of the guy’s vulture-like eye. He believed that he did such a good job of hiding the crime that he would never be caught, and he was happy about it. He did not know his actions were as wrong as they were. He just considered himself clever and intelligent. In the modern story, the main character murders his family and flat out does not know that he had committed that crime: “Gilligan says that people who kill others in the way that Andrew has don’t realize what they’re doing at the time” (Lehane). The man murdered his family and does not even know it. So, madmen cannot realize the severity and rashness of what they have done; therefore, they do not know that they are