CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS AND FINDING
THE MADNESS CHARACTERS REFLECTED IN THREE POE’S SHORT STORIES
4.1 “ BERENICE “
The beginning of the story, opens with a melancholic character recognition
Egæus, which seems alive with pessimistic, and always uses negative ways and sad.
It is also explained that the memory of his past happiness is misery for in his days. This is because during Egæus’s life, he has never felt the happiness. It can
“...,evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day. Or the agonies
which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.” be seen in
the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 130
We can see here that from the beginning the reason to marry Berenice Egæus
very strange. Berenice way he expresses with a word mystery. From her confession,
that he has never loved before Berenice. So this proves that Egæus have psychological disorders. It also c
“...,I living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation – she, roaming carelessly through
life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven
−winged hours. ,,..During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her.”
an be seen in the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 131134
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Egæus through illness, he has a reason to harm or hurt Berenice, who will
marry cousins. With a strange disease that affects Egæus, we can say that he does
have the disorder is psychological and he was a strange person. It c
“...Disease – a fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame; and even, while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her,
pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person Alas
the destroyer came and went – and the victim – where is she? I knew her not – or knew her no longer as Berenice”
an be seen in the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 131
A strange the disease monomania suffered by Egæus makes him being
malicious personal. Due to the impact of the disease can make the Egæus lose himself. Symptoms may be difficult to explain, and this disease spontaneously make
the Egæus turned into an evil character and mad about something, whatever it is. It
c “....In the meantime, my own disease – for I have been told that I should
call it by no other appellation – my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and
extraordinary form....,,
−This monomania , if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical
science termed the attentive.” an be seen in the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 132
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Madness character of Egæus starting to look obvious here, which is where his marriage to Berenice is imminent. Egæus began to plan things and act crazy to hurt
even hurt Berenice. “And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon
an afternoon in the winter of the year – one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful
Halcyon,
− I sat and sat, as I thought, alone in the inner apatment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice stood before
me.” Can be seen in the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 134
We can see more madness character of Egæus getting into. Even the A strange disease that had affected him and he suffered his mind as well, and that there
are now only thinking Berenice teeth. “I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The
teeth – the teeth – they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white,
with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania,
and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistiblc influence.” Can be seen in the quotation below:
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 135
Madness character of Egæus looks too where her reasons for marrying Berenice. That he wants to marry Bernice is not for love but he wants to analyze
Berenice as the object of his heart satisfaction. With that purpose, he has become a person who does not have any feelings at all and make it as a cruel character. It c
“.... −in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and
I had seen her ─ not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the
an
be seen in the quotation below:
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Berenice of a dream... ─ not as a thing to admire, but to analyze ─ not a s
an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation.....”
David Campbell Publisher Ltd., 1992 : 134
Overall, three the madness had Egæus caused by her illness. the disease
monomania obsessed him in all those sadistic and crazy, and make it drown in he
imagination and do not think before doing something. But the highlight was when he showed his insanity obsessed Berenice teeth. Obsession that took control of him and
make the him pull out the tooth courageous Berenice who has been dead, but he does not realize it. He said that he did it like a man walking in his sleep
.
4.2 “The Black Cat”
