does it mean to be a madman? With the help comes encyclopaedia that describes madness as a spectrum of behaviours characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioural patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others. The madman is someone who lives in own world, who lost a contact with reality, who may exhibit personality changes and thought disorder. The essence of madness is the lack of criticism of their own, incorrect perceptions and judgments.
Madness is an exciting topic. Doctors, psychologists, philosophers, scientists and normal people are interested in madmen for a long time. Madness has been also a continuous theme in literature from its beginning to the present time. Writers have always examined humanity`s strange motivations and unusual behaviours – the dark side of the human mind.
We can find a very good example of madness-stricken either in The Yellow Wallpaper (a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins) or in the novel The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very brief story about mental health and descent into psychosis. A women (main character and narrator), after the birth of a child, is experiencing depression and her physician husband, has recommend rest so that she can recuperate from what he calls a temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency. Women, closed in a room with yellow wallpaper, should only rest and sleep, sleep and rest... Her husband controls her access to the rest of the house. A key locks the door. She is forbidden from working, writing, talking and thinking, because it might get her tired. Woman does not like the house, feels trapped, lonely, helpless and powerless. Lack of sleep, loneliness and unfriendly environment causes the opposite effect on the intended. She has anything to stimulate her and becomes obsessed by the pattern and colour of the wallpaper.
(…)This paper looks to me as if it knew...