Sunday, April 7, 2013

So I Wrote A Paper And I Cited Batman #1 (AND got an A+)

(The assignment: Rely on “The Cask Of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe to explore the theme of madness. Carefully examine the details of the stories provided by each narrator in their efforts to convince readers they are sane and reveal why and how those very stories convince readers they are mad. What does each narrator say about the stories they tell that makes them believe their stories will prove their sanity? Furthermore, what is it about the tone, voice, and details of each story that makes it impossible for us to think they are sane? A minimum of ONE print sources in addition to the stories that you are analyzing. Sources should be used to support the discussion and exploration of your thesis.)

(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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