
Mental illness is a serious issue today; it plagues countless families around the world. It has been prevalent for thousands of years, however. In the past it has been called many things, insanity being the most prevalent. Over time many people have noticed it and written about these conditions. One story that stands out from the rest is The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. The narrator acknowledges he has a disease but falsely diagnoses it as one called “Nervousness”. This is not a disease that we recognize today, it an emotion, but there are diseases that make people feel that way, like Anxiety which is a disorder that makes people feel uneasy and constantly overwhelmed about issues they face. Another rarer disease is Schizophrenia which effects the way people view reality, think, act, and interact with other people. The narrator in Poe’s short story exhibits some of the symptoms of this disease. It is likely possible that if the narrator was alive today that he would have been diagnosed with this such disease. Since the disease effects the mind; one must have to understand how the mental aspect effects the story. The second concept is the way that mental illness was treated in the past versus how it is now. The narrator does not understand his sickness; he acts in strange ways and then tries to justify it by asking if an insane person would do that. The man is even more concerned about looking sane then trying to prove himself innocent of murder. In order to understand the short story’s relevance, the reader must fully understand schizophrenia, why the narrator has the disease, and how it effects people today. 

The narrator of Poe’s short story is not well. He shows many symptoms of the serious mental disease Paranoid Schizophrenia. Mental health is something that still plagues society today. These disorders have been documented in the past as insanity. The narrator describes his disease as “nervousness”. This could be a number of many disorders that we have come experience today with. today we recognize Schizophrenia as “A chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality. Although schizophrenia is not as common as other mental disorders, the symptoms can be very disabling.” (NIMH) This disease effects people over their life time. It makes people paranoid and likely to lash out at people for no reason other than the afflicted one thinks they are a threat to them. It makes people very suspicions of others. Which is dangerous because they are more likely to show violent tendencies, like the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story. The disease does not always make the afflicted one violent though. For instants the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that there are six hundred thousand homeless people in America out of that six hundred thousand people two hundred thousand have schizophrenia (Schizophrenia.com). The amount of afflicted people on the streets dwarfs the amount of people in the hospitals receiving treatment for this illness. Many of these people on the streets are there because they develop an extreme anti-social attitude and dread conversing with others. The majority of people with the disorder are dangerous but not actively violent. These people are afraid of things that do not pose any real threat to them, as the narrator is with the old man’s eye. They don’t like being around people because they begin to think that those people are conspiring against them. This is why people with the disease are suffering because they do not control how they think. They have disconnected thoughts from logic, reason, and emotion. The main character from the Short story has a lot of these traits.  

The narrator exhibits traits of the disease schizophrenia. People who have the aliment have been known to kill the ones they love and they always justify it as something necessary, as the afflicted character does. He shows multiple symptoms of the disease and is ultimately undone by these symptoms. He first became delusional calling the old man’s eye “evil” and “vulture” like. Next came his strange patterns that only someone who is sick in the head would think makes since. Finally, his hallucinations caused by guilt that leads to the disease’s signature affliction, paranoia.  

His delusions are what he is thinking makes sense. He claims to love the old man in the story but then talks about his eye as “evil” and “vulture” like, because of this the narrator decides  to “take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe) which is not logical thought about someone he claims to love. This type of thinking is not of a man with a sound mind; it is of a mind that has disconnected trains of thought that don’t add up. The main character sounds completely delusional when talking about the old man’s physical trait. He believes the eye is going to hurt him and do awful things, but in reality it is just an eye, even if it is ugly it will not hurt anything. These types of delusions are common among cases of schizophrenia. It is described as have multiple voices in one’s head. Often followed by thinking that people are conspiring against the afflicted person (Walker). That’s why the narrator thinks the police are on to him and are playing a joke on him. He thinks that they already know that he killed the old man. He thought almost aloud “Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew!” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.") There was no evidence that there was a crime there but he still thought that the police were on to him because his thought is not quite in order. The delusion is he thought the police already knew there was a murder and were just playing with him. He thought because they were there and ignoring the heart beat coming from the floor boards that they were trying to conspire against him. In reality it the beating heart was in his head and there was no sound. The police officers could not hear a thing and were just enjoying the company of the narrator before his delusions over took him. His delusions are what he thinks are real and lead him to do drastic things every time one of them comes on to him. This is another known symptom of the disease, that people think untrue things and act upon those thoughts. The narrator’s delusions are a trait of the disease schizophrenia and is one reason why he is ill.   

Patients of schizophrenia tend to show very disconnected movement and patterns. On nights he wanted to commit the murder of his beloved friend it would take him an “hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.") this is not normal behavior for anyone regardless of purpose. Taking an hour to do this has no point. He even claims “And this I did for seven long nights” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe."). He is showing patterns that do not really have any point to them. He thinks because he takes so long to put his head through a door that it means he is careful but in reality it serves no purpose because the same result could be achieved by quickly looking in. He is convinced by being slow to look in the door that it means it is thought out. He even exclaims in his story “you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work!” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe."). he thinks by his patterns it makes him smart and less insane. This is exactly what real people with the disease would do they would show strange patterns and claim them as normal things that everyone would do or at least in the narrator’s case what no madman would do. This shows that he has the symptoms because of his strange patterns when it comes to looking for his chance to kill the old man. 

The narrator has hallucinations throughout the story. When the officers are walking around the house he starts to notice a ring. It gets more defined until “I found that the noise was not within my ears.” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe."). he concludes that this must be the old man’s heart beat. He becomes exceedingly uneasy and starts to falter in confidence. Many schizophrenic people have problems with hallucinations because they tend to get paranoid very fast about little thing. These things are normally little like a sound that lead to them thinking it is something due to the paranoia they feel. This is why the disease is called Paranoid Schizophrenia. Since there is a sound that he cannot pin point right away then obviously to him it must be the beating heart of the old man he just got finished dismembering “the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs” ("The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe."). Another hallucination he had about the eye he felt it necessary to cut up the body like this and hide it in the floor boards. He felt the eye was so dangerous because he had to cut the body up to hide it so he could no longer see the eye. This an extreme case of the hallucination leading to paranoia. These actions confirm that the narrator is affected by schizophrenia and in fact has a severe case of the disease. 

Schizophrenia is a disease that still affects the people today, including one family, The Schofields. Michael and Susan Schofield’s daughter Jani suffers from schizophrenia. She is one of the youngest to be afflicted, she is seven years old. Her parents say they have seen this dark side of their daughter since she was born. Michael says that   "Most newborns sleep at least 16 hours a day, but Jani only slept 20 minutes at a time," ("The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic."). he mentioned she only sleeps twenty minutes at a time, which is a pattern like the narrator’s patterns even at such a young age she exhibits the same symptoms as the much older character in Poe’s short story. When Jani became five years of age "She would scratch until she drew blood. She bit until she drew blood. She would try to run her nails down my face to try and scratch my eyes out," Michael says. "Then, seconds later, she was back to being sweet again." ("The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic."). this quick change of behavior is brought on by the disease because her brain is making her do it. She has multiple tracks in her mind and when one “voices” becomes louder it can convince her to lash out. She manifested these thoughts into separate characters mostly in animal forms. Some of these animals were bad “Jani explained to her parents that imaginary animals named Wednesday and 400 were telling her to hit. If she didn't do it, she said they would scratch and bite her until she did.” ("The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic.").  she had put her disconnected think into different imaginary friends; each hallucinated character is a separate thought process all telling her different things. The “mean” ones like Wednesday and 400 are normally the ones that the afflicted person listens to the most because those thoughts are more demanding. She has the same disease as the narrator and even shows patterns in her behavior as the narrator does. She also shows violent outburst; nothing as extreme as murder, but she is only 7 years of age now. This little girl and Poe’s character have many themes in common such as their hallucinations and the patterns they show from day to day. Because of the similarities they share, one can conclude that the narrator has the same disease as her, schizophrenia.

A man named Stuart traveled to Russia for an Anti-communist march in 1991. He got a call in the middle of the night from an angry Russian man. Stuart says after “I arrived back in London. I felt I was being followed by the KGB.” (Stuart). He had become very paranoid after his travel. It is believed that his episode was brought on by stress. He thought he was being followed everywhere he went. He stopped trusting people and talking to them in general. His paranoia echo’s that of the narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart. The paranoia made Stuart move four times in the years following while paranoia made the narrator confess. This disease can make people do drastic things so that the effected person can feel safe. 

The narrator goes through all three symptoms that these two real patients have experienced. Meaning that this confirms his illness. These three symptoms Delusions, Hallucinations, and patterns are present in some form in every case of the disease. These can make people violent or extremely anti-social. The narrator is a person who is considered the a more severe case of schizophrenia. He takes his disease to the extreme end and kills then dismembers his friend, the old man. Not all cases are this violent; as the other two examples brought up no one dies. The disease takes a person’s mental state and separates it into different thoughts and makes every train of thought a different voice telling you to something. The majority of people afflicted with the disease are on the streets instead of being treated in hospitals (Schizophrenia.com). This disease can make people dangerous but only in more extreme cases the vast majority of people are just scared of their own mind and stay away from people. If people would generate more interest about the disease scientist studying it could acquire more funding and one day find a cure. This is the significance of Poe’s poem it helps to generate interest in why the narrator is how he is.

Schizophrenia has no known cure. It normally develops during the late teens early twenties. It has been known to form in young children and also in older people. There are ways to treat the disease. Normally being consoling and lots of drugs to suppress a person’s brain activity (Stuart). Not much is known about how the disease forms and study is made hard given that it is a mental disorder. Someday people will find a cure and put a stop to this truly most insidious disease. 

To understand why Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart is still relevant and keeps people horrified with its bizarre main character. One must understand what the story is really about. It is not about a psychopathic killer, but of a scared sick man. The narrator is not evil as he may seem to some readers, but he is more of a tragedy. One can understand this by understanding the disease that affects him, schizophrenia, why the narrator has that aliment, and finally how it effects people to day. This is why Poe’s poem has not faded in to obscurity but has instead thrived and gain popularity.              

 
