Insanity and Sanity

Jazmin Nungaray

American Literature

March12, 2013

Period 3

Insanity and Sanity

Insanity and sanity are both presented in the Author Edgar Allan Poe stories. Especially in the stories “The fall of the House of Usher”, “The Black Cat” and “The Raven”. His method of presentation is using murder and perversion.

In the story “The fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick began losing his mind after the loss of his sister Madeline’s death. For instance Roderick States was seeing paranormal things, Roderick States “While he spoke the lady Madeline passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment and without having noticed my presence disappeared”. pg 410 line 203 This shows how Roderick was hallucinating and was seeing Madeline. For this reason it shows Madeline is a ghost. In addition Roderick was seeing ordinary thing unordinary, Roderick explains “…While I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. This explains how he was going crazy for this reason he couldn’t deal of knowing the death of his sister. In conclusion the loss of Madeline made him go insane.

Another story by the famous author Edgar Allan Poe is “The Black Cat” in the story the man ended with regret after all of the insane things he did. For example the man suffered by disrespecting his wife and mistreating his pets, the narrator said “I grew day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others”. He began growing anger in himself he began feeling this way because of the actions he took. Also his anger led to bad actions, the narrator said “My pets, of course,