Twas the young man's insanity in Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart that led him to the vicious murder of the old man and his own downfall. Once a person has read the story and viewed it through the eyes of the young man helping this old man, one realizes that if told from another point of view like the old man's or one of the officers, it would just not be the same. It would be impossible to tell what was going on in the young man's mind to drive him to this maliciously callous slaughter, or what would have driven him to turning himself into the completely oblivious police. To try and pull off the theme of insanity through any other character other than the unstable young man would have been insane in itself. .
The author shows that there is something greatly bothering the young man and it must be of some significance for it to be on his mind day and night. "It was impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night" (pg 36). "I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees-very gradually-I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever" (pg 36). It is here when the author first shares what is driving the young man and proves he is going insane; the eye, in his mind it made a cold calculated man out of himself, a once caring tender young man the old man had known. The young man believes that the eye physically turned his blood cold. Humans are all warm blooded creatures so for the young man's blood to run cold and not just heartless cold, but temperature cold, the old man would have to be a witch. If the author had made narrator the old man the insanity theme would not have worked. If the old man were purposefully doing these things to drive the young man insane the theme would be cruelty, or if the old man were narrator and he did nothing to the young man, the theme would be pity for the old man.
