Blinded Men

The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether by Edgar Allan Poe was my favorite story from the class so far. The book taking place in an asylum made me feel extremely anxious, because asylums are usually known for their uncanny and mysterious experiences. Throughout the book, hints are given to the unnamed narrator about the secrets held by the keepers of the asylum. He mentioned at first his suspicions of dining with lunatics but instead he chose to blame their oddities on the country and said that the people from that area are peculiar and disregarded everything that they spoke of. During their dinner, all of the keepers speak of all their patients and make fun of all of their behaviors. Only at the very end is when the story unravels and we find out that the keepers were actually talking about themselves and Monsieur Maillard went crazy from treating his patients and actually became a patient himself. During many moments in the novel I couldn’t help but compare the narrator from this story to Jonathan Harker from Dracula. Although both men seem to be educated they are pretty bad at realizing the horrors that are truly in front of them. Only when Jonathan saw Dracula climb down the walls of the castle did he realize that Dracula was a monster, rather than the moment when Dracula’s reflection couldn’t be seen in a mirror. In the story Maillard refers to the narrator as a “very stupid looking young gentlemen” because the narrator couldn’t realize that the story that was just told was about their current situation. As Maillard said, these men probably don’t seem as threats to the villains of the novel. Perhaps it serves a purpose for these men to be blinded by their own judgments to further show the audience the frightful events within these gothic novels.