A Comparison Of Rip Van Winkle And The Tell-Tale Heart

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving and The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe are two stories that are very different. In these stories the way the narration, theme, and the impossible events are major factors in the story. These factors will be explored, while trying to find similarities between the two.
The Tell Tale Heart is about an insane man telling the audience about how he is not crazy. The story starts out with a man stating that he is not crazy and continues to explain why he killed a man. Throughout the story tell the audience that it was the man’s evil eye that drove him to the murder. What got him caught was the dead man’s heart beating in the floor.
Rip Van Winkle is about a man who fell asleep for twenty years and

escaped all his responsibility. Rip Van Winkle is the main character, which is a good person that will help everyone in the community, likes to drink and tell stories. The flaw in this character is that his farm is falling apart and wife is continuously hen picking him. Goes up a mountain drinks something that made him sleep for twenty years. He wakes up goes to town, where his wife is dead and his daughter takes him in.
The narration in Rip Van Winkle is unique, in that Rip or Irving is not telling the story. A character that is not in the story at all tells the story. Washington Irving creates Diedrich Knickerbocker to tell this story. At the beginning, Washington sets up Rip Van Winkle as an event that Diedrich witnessed in a village and wrote it down in a journal. The story was found after Diedrich died. This helps the story, because of all the descriptions of the landscape given throughout this story.
The theme of Rip Van Winkle is that sometimes something radical has to happen to make a change. Rip running away from the responsibilities to his family and farm. When Rip conveniently comes back after his wife dies, he does not seemed disappointed that she is dead. Rip left because his wife would not leave him alone and nagged him nonstop. On his return, the wife is dead and now no one will bother him. This radical event of Rip going to sleep for 20 years help get to the lifestyle he wanted. The obstacle then becomes convincing the villagers of his story. He does not want anyone to believe that he would abandon his family.
The impossible event in Rip Van Winkle is Rip fell asleep for 20 years. It has to do the folklore of the Catskill Mountains and the men playing ninepins. His story was that the men in the mountains gave him something to drink and it made him sleep for all those years. This was the only reason he did not come back and there was not any other way to explain it.
The Tell Tale Heart’s narrator is trying to convince the reader that he is not insane. The story is told like the narrator is completely innocent and was forced to do it. Throughout the story the narrator is convinced that he is sane and he the evil eye made him do it. He is telling the whole story in first person and telling us exactly how the murder happened.
The theme is people are able to convince themselves of anything and are capable of evil things. Throughout the story, he tells us in a way that sounds completely sane. The narrator says, “Observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Lauter, p 2727) He states that he is not mad because of how calmly he can tell the story. Which shows the true insanity of the story he is telling.
The magic in The Tale Tell Heart is a key element in this story. The man has an evil eye that talks to the narrator and pushes him to kill. The narrator clearly states, “for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.” (Lauter, p 2728) The story is centered on things that could not possibility happen. The other thing is the heart beating underneath the floor. This was happening after he killed the man, chopped the body into pieces, and stored the pieces underneath the floor. Granted it is all in the narrator’s head, but it is a self-induced magic.
Looking at the surface of these two stories there would not be anything similar elements.

There are numerous differences and similarities between the two. The themes of the two stories are wildly different on the surface, but there are some similarities. The theme of Rip Van Winkle is a man running away from responsibility and wife and The Tell Tale Heart convincing the audience of his sanity. The end of Rip’s adventure, he has to convince the villagers of his story. The narration is completely different and is told from different points of view. The Tell Tale Heart has a first person telling and Rip Van Winkle is told from a third person viewpoint. The biggest similarity between the two stories is the impossible events that progress the stories. In The Tell Tale Heart there is the “Evil Eye” and the heart beating in the floor. In the first event, the narrator is convinced that the old man’s bad eye is evil and that called him to kill the old man. The second, the heart beating in the floor and trying to tell the police what he did. Who could believe either one of these events could happen in the real world. The old man’s eye was evil and plotting to do something to the narrator. The heart beating after the body had been chopped up and stored under the floor was insane. The impossible event in Rip Van Winkle is that Rip drank something and fell asleep for 20 years. Who could believe that someone could sleep for 20 years, through a war, and be okay? These events had to happen to progress the story or it would be a man running from his wife and a man murdering

another.