In The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl by Ray Bradbury and The Tell

In The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl by Ray Bradbury and The Tell

Tale Hear by Edgar Allen Poe, both authors have to convince the

reader that the main characters is mad. How do they do that? Which

portrayal is more effective? Why?

1.The two stories that are going to be compared and contrasted are

'The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl' by Ray Bradbury and 'The Tell

Tale Heart' by Edgar Allen Poe. Both stories are about murder and how

the murderers react after the killings. In the story 'The Tell Tale

Heart,' Edgar Allen Poe writes about the murderer's obsession and fear

of an old man's clouded eye that drives him to kill. When officers of

the law come to question him, he imagines noises from the dead

dismembered body, which forces him to admit his crime. In the second

story, 'The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl' by Ray Bradbury another

murder has been committed. The author uses flash backs to explain

where the murderer has been so that he could wipe out all traces of

his fingerprints and presence at the house, his search for gloves then

his obsession with cleaning everywhere, which eventually leads to his

arrest. Both stories are about obsessions, in one the obsession caused

the murder, in the other the obsession was with cleaning away all

traces of the murderer is present at the scene of the crime after the

murder. My aim will be to show how both murderers were mad, or became

mad.

2.In the story 'The Tell Tale Heart,' the murderer has no motive for

murder other than his obsession. One of the old man's eyes, was

clouded over and resembled a vulture's eye, so the narrator could have

been mad even before he killed the old man. In 'The Fruit at the

Bottom of the Bowl,' the murderer was driven to jealousy...

... middle of paper ...

...chandelier

with its long pearls of rainbow glass.'

He becomes haunted by Huxley hearing once more Huxleys voice,

remembering all the touchings and gesturings, before loosing control.

Acton sobbed heavily he hurled the pottery against the wall'

Early in the morning after the murder Acton was found in the attic

the entire house was polished to a brilliance everything

glittered. Everything shone, everything was bright!. On the way out

Acton polished the front door knob with his handkerchief.'

This showed the way he lost control after the murder and his

obsesiveness led him to madness by the thought of what he had done.

Although he was not mad at the beginning we could see how he became

more and more mad as the story went on.

This is better than the other story 'The Tell-Tale heart' when the man

showed sign of madness from the beginning of the story.