Again the narrator attempts to show us that because of the wise precautions he took, no one could consider him to be mad, that he is, in fact, not mad. First, he dismembered the old man, and afterward there was not a spot of blood anywhere: "A tub had caught all — ha! ha!" The mere narration here shows how the narrator, with his wild laughter, has indeed lost his rational faculties. Likewise, the delight he takes in dismembering the old man is an act of extreme abnormality.