I desperately need help with analysing the below excerpt taken from Poe's Tell Tale Heart. I am a first year student and m going nuts trying to sort this assignment out. Would totally appreciate all of YOUR help! Urgent! need it in two days time.....please help!

rgds rexy 20/11

"Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this?".

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

Answers

This is how I view this area of the story. This boy was crazy. Let me explain. I think he was compulsive also. Very maticulus (spelling?) about this whole ordeal. His act of wanting to kill the old man for no real reason was a bit nutty, but the way at which he overly calculates every possible move, I have to give it to him. This is not someone who is totally lost it. He had way too much time on his hands in my opinion to do something soo elaborate as to take a whole hour just to open the door and put his head in to see the old man. You have to be a little off in order to have the patience to continue to be soo persistent in doing something soo trivial and menial.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

But this GSM Analysis? I think it is the conversationalstyle of the narration as if told by a speaking madman. Excited rhetoric with lots of exclamations and ironic rhetorical questions and statements. He fashions reasonable argumentation and methodology to prove his sanity as he goes about his obessions with proud dramatization. "Ha" punctuates the looney tunes cleverness with laughter to emphasize his conversational glee. As a storyteller he deliciously reenacts the excruciating processes of his mind and actions down to the last heartbeat. Many examples depending on what the blazes the GSM itself means.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2002