Dual Sided Personality
"You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work!"
The picture of this dual sided personality which the narrator creates while giving his account of the events is synonymous with the insanity versus rationality argument that he is trying to make. In his telling of the story, the narrator creates a contradiction within himself where, on one side, he protests his sanity by detailing the extreme acuteness of his senses, the cleverness, and caution that went into his crime, and on the other, he describes the exact nature with which he went about committing that crime. Although he is trying to reaffirm his sanity there is a certain irony in this, because instead of protesting his innocence, he freely admits to the horrible crime, and through the protestation of his sanity he produces an opposite effect on the reader (Robinson 369).
Although he might not realize it, by trying to distance himself from his own insanity, which he is actually just compounding, the narrator is creating this division in himself. Through the account he focuses on his extreme acuteness of senses such as hearing and the "wise precautions he takes", and uses these as justification for his sanity. "I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" He does this constantly throughout his account almost as if he is not only trying to convince the listener, but also himself. And by doing this, the narrator is able to view himself as a sane, rational individual, who has done nothing wrong.
On the other side, by doing exactly this, we see the narrator for the truly insane person that he is trying desperately to distance himself from. Quotes like, "If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.", just prove that these are things that a sane person doesn't actually do. We don't view it as a dual sided personality, instead we see him as just flat out insane; but to the narrator who has separated himself from the bad with this dual sided personality, focusing only on his senses and caution, this is his only escape from the guilt.
Although he might not realize it, by trying to distance himself from his own insanity, which he is actually just compounding, the narrator is creating this division in himself. Through the account he focuses on his extreme acuteness of senses such as hearing and the "wise precautions he takes", and uses these as justification for his sanity. "I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" He does this constantly throughout his account almost as if he is not only trying to convince the listener, but also himself. And by doing this, the narrator is able to view himself as a sane, rational individual, who has done nothing wrong.
On the other side, by doing exactly this, we see the narrator for the truly insane person that he is trying desperately to distance himself from. Quotes like, "If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.", just prove that these are things that a sane person doesn't actually do. We don't view it as a dual sided personality, instead we see him as just flat out insane; but to the narrator who has separated himself from the bad with this dual sided personality, focusing only on his senses and caution, this is his only escape from the guilt.