There is a very fine line between someone that is mad and someone that is sane so how does society gauge which side a person belongs to? In an essay by Stuart Elden on Foucault's Madness and Civilisation, he states that, "An experience, such as madness, which inhabits the frontiers of our culture, "marks a limit" which signifies, at the same time, an original division
" (Page 4.) This suggests that division in society is a direct result of an experience had by a group in society, which is generally bad for the minority.
In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the main character appears to be in conflict with himself over whether he is mad or not. In the beginning of the story he is confident, but as he tells his story, it becomes clear that he is struggling to hold onto sanity. He says, "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen ME."(Pocketful of Prose, page 59) Poe was very meticulous in the creation of this character. John E. Reilly suggests in his essay on the "Tell-Tale Heart" that Poe's narrator suffers from one of the most frequent symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia - perceptual disturbance. The "disease" spoken of by the character has "sharpened his senses - not destroyed - not dulled them." and it is clear that the "hyperacusis" the narrator is suffering from is schizophrenia.
The construction of subject positions help to regulate discourses in society. Foucault's objective was to "create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human being are made subjects." (Foucault and Architecture, page 2) He wanted to subjectify humans in order to understand them. In looking at the time Poe lived in, "American culture at the time fostered a preoccupation with death, and Edgars works reflects much of his thoughts of death and the afterlife." (Poems by Edgar A. Poe, page 2). His obsession with death may stem from the trauma he suffered when his mother died at an early age.