(All original typos and mispunctuation kept for the sake of verisimilitude and laziness.)
It
has been said that “criminals are a superstitious and cowardly
lot.” (Finger 1) Of course, this is a bit of a broad overstatement.
It is impossible to say anything definitive about criminals as a
class of people because there are many different reasons for being a
criminal. Social laws are not universally valid like mathematical
laws or scientific laws but merely reflections of the contemporary
social values and political climate. Someone may be a criminal out of
ignorance of the law, or out of desperation and need, or for greed,
or for convenience, or for civil disobedience, or out of some severe
emotional imbalance. Thus, it simply isn't possible to generalize
about the particular psychological makeup of “criminals” as a
whole. And yet, certainly, many criminals are
superstitious and cowardly. Superstitious in that the crimes they
commit are without rational cause, without any clear motivation.
Cowardly in that their crimes are secretly plotted, carried out with
intrigue and subterfuge, and done with the intention of concealment.
These are criminals that would be considered insane by the standards
of present day society. The narrators of the short stories “The
Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan
Poe, are arguably both examples of this kind of criminal.
“The
Cask of Amontillado” is written from the vantage point of fifty
years after the events it describes (Poe “Cask” 10). In it the
narrator, Montresor, describes in a very clear and detailed fashion
the time that he murdered an acquaintance of his and how he got away
with it. He is extremely eloquent when it comes to describing his
preparation (Poe “Cask” 3). He is downright exuberant when he
recalls his cleverness in luring his friend Fortunato to his doom
(Poe “Cask” 4). He even mentions how, during the final process of
bricking Fortunato up in his cellar, he stops and sits down for a few
minutes to listen to Fortunato's futile struggles to free himself:
“...that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased
my labors and sat down upon the bones.” (Poe “Cask” 9)
Montresor is clearly an intelligent and eloquent man who is able to
express himself in a clear and rational manner. He is so verbose in
describing his crime that his inability to properly articulate why he
would commit the crime in the first place is quite telling an
absence. All Montresor will say is that “[the] thousand injuries of
Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon
insult, I vowed revenge.” (Poe “Cask” 3) He also describes it
vaguely as “a wrong.” (Poe “Cask” 3)The same man who can so
vividly describe the underground crypts beneath his home in florid
prose is reduced to terse one-word descriptions of his justification.
An “insult.” A “wrong.” Because of course, there is no real
reason. Montresor is insane. Is there a better word to describe
someone who is willing to plot a meticulous murder – and more to
the point, to carry it out – over some perceived slight? It is the
lack of sensible motive that moves Montresor from the realm of the
mere criminal into the realm of the mad. While luring someone into
your basement and murdering them is probably always going to be
illegal, it's not hard to imagine some horrible crime or unimaginable
sin that someone might commit which would make luring them into your
basement and murdering them seem
like it makes sense as a response. Perhaps if that person murdered
your parents, or your children, say, or something of that magnitude.
As much as people respect and value the law, they understand that it
has its limitations and they can feel frustrated when confronting
these limitations head-on. This is probably why human culture is
littered with tales of those who take the law into their own hands in
pursuit of a higher justice. Often they are portrayed as the heroes
of their own stories (Finger 1-2). But to go through all that
preparation, to take such sadistic glee in your victim's struggles,
to still look back on it as a fond memory fifty years later; for a
mere insult? That
is not a sentiment or an experience that I would hope most sane
people would easily relate to.
“The
Tell-Tale Heart” is structurally very similar to “The Cask of
Amontillado” in that both concern themselves with first-person
accounts of crime and madness dictated by the criminals concerned,
but there are some chief differences as well. Superficially, the
narrator is nameless. More relevant is a difference in tone. Both
narrators, in being authored by Edgar Allan Poe, share his flowery
and precise style of writing, but the narrator of “The Tell-Tale
Heart” is much more frantic and animated in his prose. He is
seemingly aware of this himself, opening up his tale with “Nervous
– Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.” There is a
greater usage of exclamation points, and of italics for emphasis, and
indeed at some points the narrator interrupts his own narrative to
laugh to himself (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67). The narrator is also
trying very hard to convince the reader that he is not mad. Both the
frantic tone and the protestations of sanity can be attributed to the
narrator's being discovered for his crimes, in contrast to
Montresor's scot-free reminiscences fifty years after the fact (Poe
“Tell-Tale” 71).
In
fact, a great much of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is the narrator's
attempt to convince the reader that he is not mad: “...but why will
you say that I am mad?” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) “And have I not
told you that what you mistake for madness is but acuteness of the
senses?” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 69) “If you still think me mad, you
will think me so no longer...” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 69) But
interestingly, with every attempt to sway opinion, all he does is
convince the reader more and more thoroughly that he is, in fact,
utterly barking mad. This is, after all, the tale of a man who
murdered an old man because that old man had an “Evil Eye;” how
he smothered him with his own mattress and dismembered him and buried
him under the floorboards; and how he almost got away with it except
that he imagined that the old man's heart was still beating and he
gave himself away (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67-71). There is no part of
that story that isn't
completely insane.
There
is a line separating purely criminal
behavior – which as said above may only be deemed criminal by the
standards of the day depending on context – from behavior which is
criminally insane, and
that line appears to be at least partially determined by motivation.
A crime with a clear and rational motive may yet be a crime, but a
crime with no clear or relatable motive is more likely to be
perceived as insane by society at large (Rogers 157-158). If the
narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” had slain the old man over a
grudge, society would say “that's terrible” but many people would
fundamentally understand.
To have that kind of grudge, that kind of hate, is relatable. But no:
“I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given
me insult.” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) Or if the narrator had killed
the old man to rob him, again people would condemn it but at some
core level they would probably understand.
That kind of greed is in all of us to some extent. But no: “For his
gold I had no desire.” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) Instead we are
forced to confront the supremely disturbing idea that someone might
go through all this planning – over “seven long nights” – and
finally go through with the grisly act, for a completely
crazy reason. Over an “Evil
Eye,”say, or simply a wounded sense of pride.
The
implications of this notion – that some people are just crazy, that
they cannot be predicted or accounted for, that by their own lights
and in their own minds they are perfectly sane, and that some of them
might be clever enough or lucky enough to literally get away with
murder – are troubling implications indeed and perhaps best left
relegated to the realm of fiction, where they become more abstract
and thus less threatening to consider.
Works Cited
Finger,
Bill (w), Bob Kane (p), and Sheldon Moldoff (i). "The Legend
of the Batman - Who He is, and How he Came to Be" Batman #1
(Spring 1940), Detective Comics Inc. [DC Comics].
Poe,
Edgar A., et al. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Introduction
to Literature. Ed.
Kathleen S. Cain. Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2013.
67-71. Print.
Poe,
Edgar A. "The Cask of Amontillado." Godey's
Lady's Book. Nov.
1846. Print.
Rogers,
Richard, and Daniel W. Shuman. Conducting
Insanity Evaluations.
New York: Guilford Press, 2000. Print.
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