Insanity In The Raven

Words: 511
Pages: 3

The main characters to Edgar Allen Poe’s narratives tend to suffer from some sort of psychological problem that is worsened traumatic events in the story. Whether it be alcohol abuse or the death of a loved one they aren’t the most mentally stable characters out there. By doing this the reader will feel sympathy for the character because of the turmoil they’re going through. They are also never directly named in the narrative, and they’re told from the main characters point of view. I think that Poe did this to show that the reader and the main character aren’t different entities, which demonstrates the fine line between sanity and insanity. In Poe’s most famous pieces of poetry, The Raven, depicts a grieving man in his study seemingly tormented by a raven. He had recently lost his wife Lenore to unspecified events, all the reader knows is that the man is devastated by her death. This gives the reader a reason to feel empathetic towards his struggle since everyone has lost someone important in their lives. He demonstrates realistic characteristics for grief by showing his desperation of not …show more content…
This story is one depicting a man’s spiral into insanity with his guilt fighting his paranoia. Although a very extreme scenario, readers can connect to the feeling of immediate guilt from doing something bad and trying to get away with it. The character didn’t have a problem with the old man he killed he even liked him, but he hated the man’s eye because it unnerved him greatly. His guilt for the deed drove him to hear the old man’s beating heart, despite its inability to do so, forced him to confess to the police to be rid of that sound. Despite his claims of not being mad, and confess that everything is true he clearly shows is unreliability. His conviction in his claims make the reader pity the man not for his insanity, but for his own belief in his mental