Madness is a central theme in Edgar Ellen Poe’s two famous stories, “Eleonora”
Madness is a central theme in Edgar Ellen Poe’s two famous stories, “Eleonora” and the “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe derives inspiration for this theme from past struggles with depression and madness.
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“Eleonara” by Edgar Ellen Poe creatively uses the theme of madness to address the internal conflicts affecting the narrator. The narrator’s insanity spams from the psychological problem he is experiencing, having to deal with the grief of losing his first love, Eleonora. He is also confused and conflicted between the ideas of moving on with another prospective lover, Ermengarde, or remain faithful to promise he gave Eleonora. The narrative beginning with the narrator confessing and attempting to justify his madness. He questions, “Whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence,” This implies that narrators, to some extent, believe that madness may be the highest form of intelligence. Therefore, the narrator’s madness may be metaphorical to his heightened emotional state of mind as a result of his grief.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Ellen Poe explores how madness influenced the narrator to murder the old man. The narrator’s point of view on why he killed the man expresses his madness despite the claims that he was sane. The narrator is mad as he believes it is rational to have killed a man who he loved and did him no wrong because his eyes seemed to bother him. “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.” The narrator becoming angry about the man’s eyes and proceeding to kill him, show that he has psychological problems. After killing the man, he states, “I think it was his eye – yes, it was this,” meaning he is also unsure of the man’s eyes being the motive for killing him, and this delusional state shows that he has a mental problem.