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“The Tell-Tale Heart,” published in 1843, and “The Cask of Amontillado,” published in 1846, are two literary works of Gothic fiction written by Edgar Allan Poe. Both of these compelling stories have many prominent similarities and differences. Poe has developed unstable narrators in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” but the circumstances in each story are distinctively different. While an old man’s hideous eye drives the narrator to madness in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the thirst for revenge influences the narrator in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Although both stories contain a disturbed narrator, the narrator’s personality, the narrator’s motive for murder, and how the narrator displays their guilt is drastically different. …show more content…
Poe has presented the reader with an unhinged, first-person narrator in each of these stories, however, he makes their contrasting personalities apparent. As the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” progresses throughout the story, it is clear that he is extremely impatient and incapable of controlling his urges. With each minute that passed, the narrator became even more paranoid about the old man’s haunting eye and his desire to destroy it continued to grow. The narrator’s nervous and crazed demeanor is displayed when he thought to himself, “But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me--the sound would be heard by a neighbour”(108). Although it is the narrator’s heart that was beating loudly rather than the old man’s, the narrator’s mental illness caused him to lose touch with reality and think spontaneously. The narrator’s lack of self-control and patience provoked him to believe that he needed to kill the old man before other people in neighboring houses would hear his heart beating, which is physically impossible. In contrast to the impulsive and nervous narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator in “The Cask of Amontillado” is calm with masterful patience and control. By making smart decisions that have been planned out and thought over, Montresor, the narrator in “The Cask of Amontillado,” was successful in carrying out the murder of Fortunato, the man he seeked to get revenge on. Montresor never acted impulsively or revealed his true agenda before Fortunato was trapped with no escape. Patience and composure are evident in the Montresor’s personality when he addresses Fortunato, “I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation”(75). In order for Fortunato to trust Montresor and not be suspicious of his intentions, Montresor controlled his hateful feelings towards Fortunato until the time was right. Montresor showed his unwavering self-control by continuing to smile and be sociable with his enemy even though he truly desired to murder Fortunato. In addition to the narrator’s personalities, there are also significant differences in the narrator’s motive for murder. Both of these stories contain a narrator that successfully murders his targeted victim, but the motives for the two murders are extremely different. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” yearns for the destruction of the old man’s vulture eye. Despite the narrator’s love for the elderly man, the narrator couldn’t bear the man’s pale blue eye that constantly tormented him. The narrator’s motive for murdering the old man is shown through his thoughts, “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”(105). These inner feelings display that the narrator didn’t want to terminate the beloved old man, but just the eye itself. It was nothing that the man did to upset or anger the narrator that caused him to be killed, only his unfortunate eye with a film over it. Although the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” murdered a man due to his abnormal eye, Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” was craving revenge. Montresor did not take an insult from Fortunato lightly, and thought the remark was so degrading that he needed to make Fortunato pay for it. In the first line of the story, Montresor ruminates about his motive, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge”(75). Montresor does not go into specific details about what Fortunato had said, but it was enough to make Montresor very wrathful. Not only did Montresor want to punish Fortunato, but he wanted to “punish with impunity”(75). Fortunato was fated to be severely penalized by Montresor, and Montresor did his best to make sure that he got away with the murder without any consequences. Not only were there differences in the narrator’s motive for murder, but there also was a contrast in how the narrator displayed his guilt in each of the stories. The narrators in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” express their guilt after the murder, but they each show their guilt to very different extents.
Once the police officers had visited the narrator’s house to investigate a scream heard in the night, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” became quite nervous and started to fall apart at the seams. After being in agony for long enough, the narrator exclaimed to the officers, “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!--tear up the planks! here, here!--it is the beating of his hideous heart”(110). The narrator suffered painfully as he thought he heard the beating of the old man’s heart, and assumed that the policemen heard the loud noise as well. As it turns out, it was the narrator’s heart that was beating uncontrollably due to his feeling of guiltiness after committing the murder of a man he once cared about. It was so difficult for the narrator to handle his emotions after his heinous actions that he ultimately gave into the nagging guilt and pressure in the authority's presence. The narrator’s intense guilt about killing the old man eventually lead to him confessing to the murder and directing the police officers to the dead body. On the other hand, the narrator in “The Cask of Amontillado” displays little guilt about killing Fortunato rather than a full-fledged confession. The only instance when Montresor expresses his guilt in the story is after he sets fire to Fortunato, ending his foe once and for all. When Fortunato doesn’t reply to Montresor in the final moments of his life, Montresor finally acts, “I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so”(83). Although Montresor clearly denied his internal feelings by blaming them on the damp catacombs, the reader can infer that his “heart grew sick” because of his guilt.
Once Montresor had taken Fortunato’s life, the realization of what he had done fell on his shoulders for only a brief moment. Montresor knew Fortunato well and had formed a friendship with him, so it isn’t surprising that Montresor felt guilt and remorse after killing him. However Montresor’s slight guilt was not enough for him to admit to the murder of Fortunato, as it says in the second to last line of the story, “For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them”(83). The plastered stone wall that concealed Fortunato's dead body had never been found because of Montresor’s ability to stay quiet and suppress any of his guilt.
In the Edgar Allan Poe stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" the most prominent and important themes that are used are death, logic, and irony. The characters of the narrator and Montresor in these stories are both coldblooded murders who kill for selfish and inane reasons who firmly believe that their actions are justified even though their justifications only make sense in their own minds. They both try to convince their audience that they are sane by explaining to them their reasons for killing their victims and admitting how they did it, which only helps to prove their insanity. The narrator and Montresor are similar in that they both have impaired senses of judgment encouraged by perverse morals and believe that the horrible things that they do are justifiable.
The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado are two stories written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 18th century. Both of these stories are primarily focused on the mysterious and dark ways of the narrator. Since these stories were written by the same author, they tend to have several similarities such as the mood and narrative, but they also have a few differences. For instance, the characteristics of both narrators are different, but both stories portray the same idea of the narrator being obsessive over a certain thing.
The short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, published in January of 1843 and the story, “The Cask of Amontillado”, published in November of 1846 were both written by Edgar Allan Poe. The stories both have notable similarities and differences. Although both stories encompass an unstable narrator, the narrator's personality, motives for murder, and how they display guilt differ in each story.
Poe presents the narrators of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" as devious, obsessed characters. Both are overpowered by the need to consume the life of their victim. Though they use different strategies to carry out the murders in different ways, obsession is the driving force in both. It is this obsession that inspires them to design cunning strategies and carry out the executions.
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
Gothic literature is known for captivating readers by bringing to light the dark side of humanity. The Gothic possesses many key elements such as paranoia, anxiety, death, etc. It strikes fear and suspense in the reader not by creating fictional monsters, but showing the reader the types of monsters that lurk within human beings. In “the Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, various themes of the Gothic are present throughout the short story such as gloom and doom, darkness, and madness. These elements are used to enhance the central theme of the piece: revenge. I will argue that Poe uses a number of the Gothic elements to craft an intense dark tale of revenge: an unreliable narrator, madness, darkness, a haunted setting, and evil/devil
Poe 's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a deep impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit Edgar Allan Poe as the "architect" of the modern short story. Poe was the author of the two short stories “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator has an obsession fixed on the old man’s “evil” eye which leads him into madness and hate, and to killing the man he claims that he loved. The Montresor of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” hates his enemy Fortunato and he becomes obsessed with the thought of getting back at Fortunato, his hate becomes increasingly
Edgar Allan Poe has faced many difficulties in life and has faced many devastating events. This allowed him to create a dark mind for himself and his stories that he has written. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story about a man who is aggravated by the eye of the old man he lives with and it drives him so mad that he stalks and kills the old man. Although, this does not bring relief upon him due to the man still hearing the heart of the old man and it drives him insane to the point that he reveals what he has done to the police when no one has suspected a thing. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe it uses the tension of foreshadowing to create the narrator’s madness.
Typically, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and The Tell Tale Heart are three criminal stories of this kind. In these tales, Poe takes readers in the murky territories of the strange world of insanity. And now, let's see what the features and familiarities of these half-mad, evil, and dark criminal minds.
In the short stories "The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe is about murderers who have killed to satisfy their needs. Although there are similarities between the two of them, but one murderer is clearly more dangerous than the other.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a frightening and entertaining short story about the severe consequences that result from persistent mockery and an unforgiving heart. Poe’s excellent use of Gothicism within the story sets the perfect tone for a dark and sinister plot of murder to unfold. “The Cask of Amontillado” simply overflows with various themes and other literary elements that result from Poe’s Gothic style of writing. Of these various themes, one that tends to dominant the story as a whole is the theme of revenge, which Poe supports with his sophisticated use of direct and indirect factors, irony, and symbolism.
Edgar Allan Poe was "a respected critic and editor" (Kennedy, Gioia 41), and like most writers, he had a typical style of writing that made each of his stories similar and unique in their own way. Edgar Allan Poe's writing style was dramatic, and most of his stories dealt with death. For example, Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Cask of Amontillado" which revolved around Montresor who "vowed revenge" (Poe 1141) against his old friend Fortunato, and "The Tell-Tale Heart" which told the story of how and why the narrator killed the old man which he "loved" (Poe 41). Both of the narrators of this stories have similitudes and differences.
Edgar Allen Poe has a keen sense of how the human mind works, and he explores this insight in two of his short stories: “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe demonstrates how the human mind can wander to dark places when clouded by obsession and guilt in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and masterfully writes about the art of manipulation and revenge in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Both stories share dark similarities both in writing style and in plot, yet the human characteristics and motives driving each of the main characters vary. In these two stories, warped logic is ever-present as both men struggle with their conscience before, during, and after their violent crimes. Poe is able to capture the essence of madness
‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ focuses on insanity as a state of consciousness. The story begins with the unreliable narrator, a running theme throughout Poe’s stories, who insists that while he is not mad the ‘disease’ from which he is suffering ‘had sharpened his senses’ (English 92F Course Guide 20). The actions which follow this declaration completely juxtapose the narrator’s claim of sanity, and lead readers to deem that the man is totally consumed by madness and obsession due to nothing but the look of an old man’s eye, which he refers to as the ‘vulture eye’ (English 92F Course Guide 20). From the beginning of ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ it is clear that the effect that Poe is trying to create on the reader is that of terror and imminent death. The action of the story takes place in the ‘extensive vaults’ of the Montresor family (English 92F Course Guide 23). The dark and dingy setting of the story clearly foreshadows the nature of Montresor’s plans. At the climax of the narrative, readers are left with the disturbing image of a man having been buried alive in the catacombs beneath Montresor’s house and also the shock that ‘for half of a century’ that is where the Fortunato’s body has remained (English 92F Course Guide
The Tell-tale Heart is a short story which was written by an American writer by the name of Edgar Allan Poe who was born on January 19, 1809. His story is mainly about an old man’s murder. It was published in January 1843, it talks mainly about a man with no specific name who kills an old man for just a strange reason. Poe gives the story about the murder in order to prove himself as not insane. The fictional scenarios the narrator describes in the story shows various traits of the narrator’s character which is helpful to the readers in terms of their feelings towards murder and confessions among others thus reminds the readers of how evident they are in the tale.