Insanity In Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

“True! -nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them.” (Poe) There are different definitions of legal insanity such as the M 'Naghten Rules which were a reaction to the acquittal in 1843 of Daniel M 'Naghten on the charge of murdering Edward Drummond, whom M’Naghten had mistaken for British Prime Minister, Robert Peel. M 'Naghten fired a pistol at the back of Peel 's secretary, Edward Drummond, who died five days later. The House of Lords asked a panel of judges, presided over by Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a series of hypothetical questions about the defense of insanity. The principles expounded by this
When the tests set out by the Rules are satisfied, the accused may be adjudged "not guilty by reason of insanity" or "guilty but insane.” (Wikipedia) In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the unnamed narrator demonstrates how easily perspective can become distorted and the question becomes is he “not guilty by reason of insanity” which he strongly denies, or is he “guilty but insane” by which he cautiously premeditates an ingenuous plan
The resulting lack of self-knowledge makes Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ judge the old man based on his own (the narrator’s) affections, and not the truth. The deliberate misjudgment of the other can only mirror the “blindness of the self, signifying a lack of insight.” (Magdalen) Basically, seeing the fault in others while being blind to his own shortcomings is what the narrator is expressing. He became fixated with the vulture eye of the old man and in doing so he became motivated to murder the old