Edgar Allan Poe wrote many gothic stories where the narrators have most apparently gone mad. "The Tell-Tale Heart" "MS. Found in a bottle" and "A Descent into the Maelstrom" are some of these stories. In all these stories, the narrator is driven completely mad by something insignificant. Poe makes this point very clear in these stories. Even Poe's poems are filled with madness. "The Raven" is a great example of this.

In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator is a caretaker for an old man. He is driven insane by the one pale eye that the old man has. He plans to and kills the old man one night and buries him under the floor. When the police arrive the narrator believes that the old man's heart is still beating and rips the floor up and confesses his crime. The eye of the old man was "a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones..."(p.557) and this was the narrator's only reason for planning and killing the old man. Throughout the entire story the narrator is trying to convince the audience that he is in fact not mad, which makes him see even more insane.

"Now at this point you fancy me mad. Mad

These stories show the thin line that Poe has between the natural and supernatural. They are so closely perceive that it is easy to see and believe what isn't there. Poe loved to make his readers see the supernatural come true and he did this very well. Until you really go over and think about how absurd it really is; one can make sense of what is going on. Yet there are always the little hints to tell the reader that what seems is not always true. If a Poe reader doesn't keep this in mind, they are doomed to fall into the spell of the unconscious world of his many gothic stories and poems.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Poe-Poetry, Tales, & selected Essays. ed. Library of America College Editions

In "MS. Found in a bottle" the narrator is sailing with his crew when a storm destroys but does not sink their ship. All of the crew but him and an old swede were washed overboard. Then their ship collides with a much bigger vessel, the narrator is knocked over onto the strange ship. The entire crew cannot see him and the assumption that they are dead or not of this world is made. The entire ship is pulled into a whirlpool where the narrator dies but he throws his MS overboard.

When the rapping begins it awakens the narrator he is in the state of "Nearly napping" (Poe p.81). This poses the question of whether or not he was actually awoken at all. It is very easy to read the story as if a raven flew in through the window and the narrator drove himself mad by the answers he was given. Yet it is also plausible that in his grief stricken state that he dreams this terrible encounter believing that he and his loved one will never be together again. In any case the narrator is driven mad.

In "A Descent into the Maelstrom" narrator 1 has hired narrator 2 to guide him to the top of a mountain

Some common words found in the essay are:
Descent Maelstrom, Tell-Tale Heart, MS Found, Incomprehensible Wrapped, Allan Poe, Poe-Poetry Tales, Prof Cody, gone mad, Edgar Allan, College Editions, ms found bottle, gothic stories, edgar allan, ms found, descent maelstrom, narrator driven, grief stricken, found bottle, tell-tale heart, questions answer,
Approximate Word count = 1204
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)