Compare and Contrast of "The Goose Girl" by the Grimm Brothers and "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

1402 Words3 Pages

Upon reading both short stories of Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Tell- Tale Heart” and the Grimm Brothers “The Goose Girl” one can automatically see some resemblance and diversity between the two. For example both the chambermaid and the unnamed narrator use violence and manipulation to get what they both desire the most, murder is involved in both stories, and they don’t feel much remorse of what they do and it makes them happy. While both stories have correlations they also have a sense of their own unique differences such as in the Goose Girl, the chambermaid is greedy, jealous, condemned the original princess to take her place as a chambermaid and the princess and original chambermaid never got along. While in the short story “ A Tell-Tale heart” the unnamed narrator shows signs of having a mental illness, split personality and the unnamed narrator and old man got along very well. The “A Tell-Tale Heart” short story is about the narrator taking care of an old man who can no longer take care of himself. He became obsessed with the old mans eye and would sneak into his room at night to watch his eye and watch the old man sleep. He had nothing against the old man; he was always nice and friendly. The only thing that bothered him was his eye and how it was “a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in [his] bones” (p. 304). One night while creeping into the old mans bedroom to watch for his eye, he made a noise with his thumb slipping upon the tin by accident and the old man sprang up. He was motionless for an hour till the old man lay back down. While trying to sneak out of the room the old man eyes were open to see him standing there and shrieked and the narrator saw upon his vulture eye. “Meantime the hellis... ... middle of paper ... ... put in a barrel with two big nails inside and dragged road by road with horses after he finds our she was manipulating him, the prince and his kingdom. Manipulation was also used in “The Tell Tale Heart” when he bring the officers in he is deceiving them by saying it was he who let out a shriek and the old man was away in the country. The plot in The Goose Girl had a storyline already behind it and it just was played out in a very interesting way. One could almost predict what was going to happen considering it is a fairy tale. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” it has minor background information, it doesn’t give much but you feel the suspense and tension in the short story. It builds up this entire thriller like story as you read and the plot was very distinctly planned and at first read you don’t really know what’s going to happen next and that makes it a great thriller.

Open Document