In many texts Edgar Allen Poe has shown that he is afraid of those who are mentally insane but truly believes them to be rational, reasonable people. While reading the stories "Berenice" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" you can see her fears emerge in somewhat irrational ways. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe writes about a man who becomes obsessed with a man's eye. The old man is blind and therefore has a blue haze over his eyes. The narrator decides that he must kill the man to get rid of him, so he sneaks into his room every night for a week. One day the old man wakes up and the narrator throws himself at him and suffocates him. When he feels his heart stop beating he removes the mattress with which he was suffocating him. When he sees that the man is dead, he cuts his body into pieces and puts it under the floor. One of the neighbors called the police because he heard screaming, so when the police arrived the narrator convinced them that everything was fine. As they talked the narrator felt guilty and confessed everything, showing them where he had buried the body. The narrator was a normal man who could not be classified as mentally incapacitated. He was a mentally healthy man who became obsessed with something out of the ordinary. He was so obsessed that he became mentally ill and didn't know it. He thought it was rational to sneak into that man's room for eight days. He realized after he killed the man and the police spoke to him that it was unhealthy for him to kill the man because his eyes were cloudy. Once the man realized what he had done, he was filled with fear and guilt. In this text you can see Poe's fears of those who don't know what they are capable of until it happens. In the story "Berenice", Poe talks about a man named Agaeus, who is in love with his cousin Berenice. Both suffer from ailments. He has a form of epilepsy; every time she has an episode she loses consciousness and appears to be dead. Agaeus suffers from an obsessive disorder. Berenice gets sick and the only thing that isn't affected is her teeth, so one day she comes in to talk to Agaeus and smiles and he becomes obsessed with her teeth. He focuses so much on this, that he ends up passing out and not remembering anything that has happened in the time that has passed. Around that time, Berenice has an episode and everyone thinks she's dead, so they bury her. The next thing Agaeus remembers is his maid running in and screaming that someone has desecrated Berenice's grave. They look at each other and see the shovel and muddy clothes and he gets so upset when he sees a container next to him. He tries to grab it to see what's inside, but he drops it and her teeth scatter across the floor. Agaeus seems to be doing well mentally, but he is so focused on certain things in his life that the days pass without him realizing it. There had been days when he was so focused on Berenice's teeth, and he hadn't noticed until his maid had yanked him off her. Once he passed out he realized he had done something horrible. In his “daydream” he had dug up Berenice's grave, where she was buried alive, and pulled her teeth from her head. We know she was still alive because he was covered in claw marks from when she tried to stop him. Poe speaks indirectly about the fear of those who are deranged, but he does not realize it. It talks about how there is evil in all of us and that our hearts can easily become corrupted. In every story he writes, he's about the person who becomes obsessed with some element of their life that drives them crazy. They all started out as people.