Lamb To The Slaughter And The Tell Tale Heart Comparison Essay

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Conner Morgan Miss Guentzel Language Arts 8C, Per. 5 12 March 2024 Compare and Contrast Essay “Motives for murder can be condensed into four sets of 'Ls': Lust; Love; Loathing; and Loot.” The horrific short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a great example of this. This story is about a man who wants to have the old man he is caring for die and kills him. This is because he believes that the old man’s eye is evil. He eventually reveals that he did this when he gets interrogated by the police. The horrendous short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl is a great example of an interesting tale. A loving wife kills her husband with a leg of lamb after he tells her something she does not want to hear. She proceeds to cover up the evidence by having the detectives eat the leg of the lamb. …show more content…

First, there are a lot of similarities and the murder was intended to be hidden in both stories. The evidence was concealed under the planks in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the evidence was consumed in “Lamb to the Slaughter”. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” states, “I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited them all between the scantlings” (Poe 7). Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” states, "It'd be a favor to me if you’d eat it up” (Dahl 5). The younger man stowed away the older man’s body on the floorboards and the wife had the detectives eat the proof. The stories are very similar in the fact that both murderers hide the evidence. Second, there are many differences between these two stories. One of these differences is that the murder in “The Tell-Tale Heart” was planned and the murder in “Lamb to the Slaughter” was

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