Deliberate Cruelty By Edgar Allen Poe Essay - 1514 Words

Deliberate Cruelty is not Madness Edgar Allen Poe is infamous for his works hat features violence, madness, death among other dark themes. His texts â€Å"The Black Cat† and â€Å"The Telltale Heart† are not different. Both of the narrators committed murder and justify their reasoning behind their madness and their heinous crimes. The former killed his wife in an attempt to kill the black cat and the latter killed the old man because of his evil eye. They both attempted to hide the bodies, but ultimately reveal their crimes due to their insanity. The readers perceive the narrators’ actions as an act of madness and violence. Deliberate cruelty is the intentional infliction of pain and suffering upon someone. Poe demonstrates the deliberate cruelty of the narrators instead of their madness. In this essay, I will point out the specific instances of deliberate cruelty in both texts. He reveals the narrators’ deliberate cruelty by showing their rationale despite illustrating their loving relati onships with their victims. Poe depicts the cruelty through not only the selective details that illustrate the stable minds of the narrators, but also the actions that both protagonists exhibit in the texts. This is important because people normally characterize these actions as madness. This generalization of cruelty as madness contribute to the stigmization of mentally ill people. However, careful reading of both texts shows otherwise. It is important that their personality is accurately