Comparing Poe's The Raven And Tell-Tale Heart

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Grief is an emotion of abyssal sorrow that has plagued many unfortunate mortals, including the late Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was an 1800’s gothic writer who lived a short, sorrowful life. Themes and motifs across Poe’s writings repeat, and differentiate based upon of various calamities, such as the death of a loved one. While Poe’s stories “The Raven” and “Tell-Tale Heart” have similar dark settings, and cimmerian symbols, they contrast in the source of downfall, and the narrators’ reactions to obstacles; this exhibit Poe’s debilitated disposition after the death of his wife Virginia.
To start off, a similarity between “The Raven” and “Tell-Tale Heart” is the dark settings in each piece. In “The Raven”, the setting of the story is described …show more content…

In the opening of “The Raven”, the narrator voices, “Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow/ From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore”(Poe, 9). In this section of the poem, the narrator is a widowed man haunted by the death of Lenore. The quotation demonstrates the narrator's lack of confidence to start anew after the death of another, which ultimately leads to the narrator’s undoing. This is reflective upon Poe; who had no hope of improving his life’s nor state of happiness. The narrator of “Tell-Tale Heart” has a contrasting cause of downfall. In the short story, the narrator panics at the sound of a heartbeat, saying “It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled.”(Poe, para 11). This panicked reaction from the narrator is simply caused by guilt. Although the narrator felt no stigma killing the man’s eye, the murder of the old man caused apprehension; for the old man has never wronged the narrator. This guilt stems from Poe’s survivor's guilt The differences in sources of downfalls for the narrators expresses Poe’s different weakness as a result of his wife’s

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