In “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” by Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar writes about the topic of mental illness. The setting takes place in an insane asylum and the narrator wants to know how things worked. It was humorous and creepy.
The short story is in a way dark since in the 19th century if you were considered sick with mental illness, you would be put in an institution similar to a jail. They took mental illness as no joke but still kept mental illness people in filthy conditions and even abused them. What is interesting to me about the story is how Poe in some way compared sanity with madness. Towards the ending of the story the narrator finds out that the guest are actually lunatics and the stories they told were about themselves.
Monsieur Maillard talks about a new system created by Doctor Tarr and Fether. As well as how their were dangers in the old system. In the old system they allowed patients to have freedom which is not bad compared to other asylums. But after it is revealed that Maillard has gone mad, it didn’t make sense why they imprisoned the keepers if they had their freedom. Unless the keepers abused the patients with their mental illness. How the treatment worked was treating them how they wanted to be treated instead of punishing them which resulted them to actually think of themselves as frogs or a teapot. It is ironic that the superintendent or the person in charge of the lunatics has gone mad.
