A Comparison Of Edgar Allan Poe And Alfred Hitchcock's Psychodo

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You are running up the stairs, gasping for air not stopping because if you slow down just a little, that thing behind you is right there about to grab your foot. You make it to the top, slam the door and fall to the ground because you realize you escaped near death. Just from this scenario is your heart is beating; Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock used this and many other scenarios in their literature to illustrate suspense and an eerie mood. It has been known for years that Alfred Hitchcock based his thriller Psycho off some of Edgar Allen Poe’s works of literature. Before Alfred Hitchcock’s time, Edgar Allan Poe was a master at mysterious and eerie writings. His works, “The Raven” and “Tell Tale Heart”, were definitely of a mysterious …show more content…

In Hitchcock’s Psycho he places Norman Bates as the main character, and an insane one at that. Norman follows the theme of isolation leading to madness because he develops a split personality. After he killed his mother and her boyfriend, he was all alone in the eerie house by the motel. As years go on Norman started to act as his mother and even going as far to preserve her corpse and pretending he is speaking for her. His isolation without his mother made his to develop a psychological disorder and start to become so crazy that his mother’s personality took over him and made his brain think he lost Norman in the process. This could compare to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart.” In “The Tell Tale Heart” a man becomes so isolated from the outside world that he is sure this eye is coming after him, as well as he beings with trying to convince us he is not going mad. He would describe the way he carefully snuck into the room with the old man, and his eye in grave detail. This isolation and the idea that the eye was out to get him led him to kill the man. When he killed the man, he described “the wise precautions he took for the concealment of the body” (Poe 253). This is almost the same as Norman because Norman states that "everyone goes crazy once in a while" (Psycho). Norman went crazy because he was isolated, as well as this man because he was all …show more content…

Poe and Hitchcock are both masters in literature and always will be. Although, Hitchcock would may never have been famous if it were not for Poe 's incredible eerie writing and craftsmanship. Overall, "The Raven" and "The Tell Tale Heart" both have an array of themes interwoven throughout them with an abundance of spookiness. Psycho has been dubbed an American horror classic, and will always be known not only for its themes and spookiness, but for being the first movie to flush a toilet. In a last word, Poe 's greatness should influence more people then just Hitchcock because without either of them, where would we be in Literature or Film

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