How do we even know if we are sane? Are we sane if we aren't on any medication? In this day and age, maybe that is the key: being the only one not medicated to the gills. Or are we sane if we can acknowledge our own insane moments? Some say that the insane are the ones who always think they are truly sane. Sanity is a hard thing to get a concrete definition on. Every human has had moments of insanity, from being absolutely enraged and losing their mind to split second thoughts that cross the line. But who decides that line?
In the case of the narrator from "The Tell-Tale Heart," he truly thinks he is sane. He notes multiple times the care he takes when planning to kill the old man: "True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story." He insists on his sanity, and that while the disease did sharpen all of his senses, it did not make him insane.
His main evidence that he is not sane is his planning and his calm attitude after the fact. Yes. The narrator does plan extensively for the moment when he will rid himself of the man's evil eye: "Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But 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! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him." He continues to claim that he is not mad, and that his planning proves it. A madman would simply run in and commit the act, probably in a fit of rage.
And yet, in the end, that is how the old man died. The narrator is in the room, with the lamp on the evil vulture eye, when he hears the old man's heart beating. The sound of this steady pounding is what drives him to the fit of rage, for "the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour!" Upon this realization, he leaps into the room and kills the old man.
The narrator's second piece of evidence to his sanity is his calmness after the murder. He hides the body in what appears to be a perfect hiding place, dismembered in the floors of the room where the old man died. Yet again, it is the heart of the man who destroys his sanity. While the police are sitting in the very room where the murder took place, the narrator hears the heartbeat again. Convinced the police can hear the growing noise, he turns himself in, revealing the hiding place of the body.
The narrator of "The Black Cat" is driven mad both by the love he has for his animal and rampant alcoholism. He and the cat were close companions for years, and yet one day the cat begins to ignore him - at least the narrator thinks he is. The man's alcoholism makes him believe that the cat is now ignoring him. In a fit of drunken rage, he slices out the cat's eye, leaving just the socket. Slowly the cat heals, but the narrator can tell that their relationship will never be the same.
After the narrator cuts out the cat's eye, the cat heals, but runs in terror every time the man approaches. With enough of his old soul left, the man first grieves the loss of his friend. Then his grief gives way to irritation until the perversity of his new soul eclipses his old one. He then hangs his cat, "with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence."
Clearly the man has no remorse for killing his cat. But is he truly himself? The alcohol in his system and his dependence on it transformed him into an entirely different person. So is he insane? Or is he someone else? The questions of insanity in both of these pieces are still relevant today. How do we know who we are or what our mental state is? What does being insane even mean?
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