1. His main internal conflicts are very much impulse controls. From a more scientific point of view, he presents a clear chemical imbalance that leads to recklessness and violence. Externally, he does not seem to be able to find harmony with his surroundings, regardless of how ideal or loving they may be.
2. This narrator is insane.
3. Poe may have been trying to present to the audience an inside look into, not only the conflict of a person who has this inside them, but also the progression of going from loving animals, a person, and life, to murdering everything they once loved.
4. Violence
5. Transgressive thoughts and an "angst-ridden sense of alienation" (Bjerre, 2017)
6. Overall, Poe, as Bjerre (2017) points out, was one of the first to use the Southern Gothic Genre very successfully in his poems and short stories, and, in doing so, made excellent use of characteristics, such as transgressive thoughts, alienation of the characters, irrationality, horror, and even dark humor.
Explanation:
1. It is said that the chaos in your mind is reflected in the chaos that surrounds you. This seems to be a very clear case. No matter how wonderful his home life with his loving wife and beautiful pets was, no matter how much he and his wife had in common in their love for animals, or how loving and loyal his pets were, this man was battling something much more powerful inside that led him to destroy this good life, and he needed an "excuse" or "reason" to justify the violent mess in his mind.
2. He is insane in a psychopathic sense, in the sense that he needs violence to feel some sort of peace of mind. He speaks about sleeping tranquilly after brutally murdering his wife with an axe on the head and putting her body inside the walls. He has a loss of connection, he gradually stops understanding the difference between right and wrong until he eventually "loses it" completely in order to feel any sort of tranquility with his surroundings.
3. Simply put, showing this side of a situation like this gives readers an uncomfortable perspective to an even that we would normally and simply categorize as crazy. The progression or spiral this man experienced through the years injects a sense of terror in the audience because it sends a message that this could happen to anyone.
4. Violence is a robust, uncomfortable, and terrifying concept that is very adequately shown in this work by Poe with precision.
5. It seems this character is surprised, almost, by the thoughts that start accosting him after a lifetime of loving animals and an initially happy marriage. The transgressive thoughts that start to plague him eventually take over his impulses, and most definitely and painfully alienate him from society, starting with those that were closest to his heart and eventually from everyone else.
6. Poe means to show us this narrator's devolving mind, his journey in the spiral towards insanity, and the resources found in the Southern Gothic Genre are his way of doing this successfully. Not only is the narrator surprised by his desires, impulses, and confusion, but the readers find themselves disgusted and intrigued by this journey.
Bjerre (2017). Southern Gothic Literature. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.304. https://oxfordre.com/literature/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-304
