Limitations

By Musab Kazmi

Nobody enjoys having a disorder or a disability. It can limit someone’s capabilities even if, at times, it is not their fault or control. These limits, which are caused by disabilities or disorders, will overwhelm people with desires to either overcome their limitations or to get past their limitations to carry out their goals. In both “Flowers for Algernon” and “The Tell Tale Heart”, both authors give the narrators the unique trait of having a mental disorder which affects the way the narrators think, act, and speak and gets in the way of both of the narrator’s goals in one way or another.
In “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator suffers from a disorder that causes him to become extremely nervous from everyday objects. The whole story of “The Tell Tale Heart” is fueled with the author’s desire to kill an old man whom he has lived with because he happens to have a pale eye that resembles one that a vulture would have. In the quote “I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”,it is shown that the narrator gets inordinately nervous which slowly overwhelms and forces him to get rid of whatever that is causing his fear. When the police came to search for the old man’s body after someone reporting a scream in his house, the narrator was able to hide the body under the floorboards so the police couldn’t find him. Unfortunately for the narrator, he started to become nervous of his own heartbeat which he thought was the old man’s heart to the point that he opened the floorboards and admitted he killed the old man. ””Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is the beating of his hideous heart!” While some might argue that the narrator was pretending to be insane to get excused for killing the old man, they forget that “The Tell Tale Heart” is a first person story which is supposed to portray what is happening in the narrator’s mind. The narrator’s thoughts matched exactly to what his actions were.
The main character of “Flowers for Algernon” is Charlie Gordon who suffers from a learning disorder which causes him to act, speak, and talk like a child which is even displayed in the text such as this one,“ I have nuthing more to rite now so I will close for today.” Charlie’s goal in this short story is to simply become smart. To do this, there were scientists who did surgery on Charlie which made him able to learn very quickly. Miss Kinnian, Charlie’s teacher, even said “You’re accomplishing in days and weeks what it takes normal people to do in half a lifetime. That’s what makes it so amazing. You’re like a giant sponge now, soaking things in. Facts, figures, general knowledge.” Unfortunately for Charlie, the effects of the surgery wasn’t able to last that long which made him forget everything he learned while he was smart. The only thing he remembers now is that he was once a genius and now he can’t even read which is shown in this quote, “Im going someplace where nobody knows that Charlie Gordon was once a genus and now he cant even reed a book or rite good”.
It is never enjoyable to have an obstruction that cannot be broken through. Charlie and the narrator from “The Tell Tale Heart” have to struggle with this fact and the only solution that they can use is to just deal with it. Both “Flowers for Algernon” and “The Tell Tale Heart” have the narrator struggling to get past their limitations and fulfill their goals. They were both able to accomplish their goals to a certain extent, but when it mattered most they were pulled all the way back to the first step.