Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are two very different stories that share similar literary elements. The Tell-Tale Heart is about a man who killed this old man because of his “evil looking eye” and “The Masque of the Red Death” is about a prince who hides from a disease that is devastating his kingdom. However, these stories are very similar and are easily comparable. For example, they both let other people die for their own personal needs. Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic style of short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are two stories with insane protagonists that are motivated by the setting and their selfishness and both of these stories share the same tone …show more content…
and they share the same themes of time, death, sin, guilt, irony, fear, and disease. The First comparison between the “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of The Red Death“ is the protagonists. In Poe’s Masque Of the Red Death, the main character Prospero doesn’t care for the kingdom and is more concerned about saving himself from the Red Death and leaves his townspeople to be slaughtered by it. He took the threat of the Red Death very seriously and tried to take precaution. Poe wrote, “The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion”(Poe 3). In the Tell-Tale Heart, the main character is clearly mentally ill. He is driven to kill the old man because of his big and bulging eye. The narrator says, “ His Eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it” (Poe 12). However, the narrator had no other reason for wanting to kill the old man other than the eye. He claimed that the old man has never done anything to him and that he has always loved the old man that he doesn’t want his money either (Chua 352). In the end, they Both end up to be killers. The narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart was a murderer and Prince Prospero technically murdered his entire country, but they’re both motivated by their own selfish needs. The style and tone of “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are also very similar. In “The Masque of The Red Death”, Poe creates a gothic and elegant tone throughout the story. The opening line, “THE ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood”(Poe 9), shows that he is creating a gothic style story whereas “The Tell-Tale Heart”, creates a gothic and chaotic style. An example of how the style is chaotic is in the beginning of the story where the narrator says, “ IT’S TRUE! YES, I HAVE BEEN ILL, very ill. But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind, why do you say that I am mad?”(Poe 1). Both of these stories have a gothic tone because the way Poe writes creates a dark and an eerie feeling towards the reader and he aims at a concentrated effect or an emotional response from the reader (Chua 353). Both of these stories don’t just have the same tone, but they also share death. In both stories, death takes innocent victims. The narrator kills the old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” because of his “vulture” eye and the people in “The Masque of the Red Death”, are dying from a disease. The deaths have something else in common: murder. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the killer, and he explains in the telling of his story how he felt no ill will toward the old man, but how it was the old man's “vulture eye” that caused his anger. Later, he reflects how he had been contemplating this murder for multiple days. He claims that the old man has never done anything to him and that he loved him and doesn’t want his money and that his eye was the problem(Chua 352). Prince Prospero, in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death, goes to great lengths to ensure that death will not find him. He orders that the gates are welded shut with Knights guarding it. In the last sentence of the short story, Poe summarizes the theme of death by writing “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion overall” (Poe 11). Therefore, death is a main factor in both of these stories. In both stories, the themes are very similar.
These stories share the themes of time, sin, guilt, irony, morality, fear, and how diseases manifest people. The first theme that both of these short stories share is time. In The Tell-Tale Heart, time is very detailed. Poe writes how the narrator was staring at the old man and then claimed that the old man’s “hour had come”. Poe also wrote that the heart was beating faster and faster as time was passing by (Poe 4), Also, using flashback, the narrator details many of the nights that he has been planning for the murder and telling the reader specifically that over the nights he has looked into the room to observe the old man sleeping, and that the eighth night was the one that was chosen for the murder (Poe Decoder). In The Masque of the Red Death, the clock represents the time in the story.The clock symbolizes the countdown to Prince Prospero’s death and it symbolizes that everyone’s time will eventually come. As H.H Bell said, “The stroking of the clock each hour is a reminder to the guests of the limited time left in their own lives”(238-239). The clock does not only mark what time it is; as a foreshadowing device, it suggests that time is running out for Prince Prospero and his guests, though they seem oblivious to it (The
Artifice). Another theme that these stories share is Guilt. In the Tell-Tale Heart the narrator has guilt about killing the old man and after the deed was done, he could hear the old man’s heart and it drove him insane. As a result of this guilt, he admitted that he killed the old man to the officers and showed them where he buried him. In the Masque of The Red Death, Prince Prospero feels guilty towards the people that he has left dead and didn’t help and in result, he gets killed by the Red Death. Some of the symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death is the same in The Tell-Tale Heart. The most important example is the clock and the watch. The big, black, creep clock in Masque of the Red Death is located in the black room, so it is not hard to guess that it is meant to be a symbol of death and that time flies away. Similarly, in The Tell-Tale Heart, each tick of the watch symbolizes a movement closer to the inevitable death that all humans face. “ Symbolism and imagery seems to point the reader to one conclusion: death is coming, whether you want it to or not”(The Artifice) In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe created the two stories The Tell-Tale Heart” and the “Masque of The Red Death” with similar literary elements. He also made them have the same fundamental message about the dark side of life containing disease, death, and guilt.
Edgar Allan Poe's writing style is based on the supernatural and the unknown. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero invites the revelers to come to the castle to party until the danger of pestilence is gone. The party was interrupted by an intruder who was dressed in all black (like the Grim Reaper) and was associated with the plague of the "red death." The reaper killed everyone one by one in the end. The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. An allegory is symbols that are presented in the story that have two levels of meaning. An example can be the clock in the story. The clock told time and represented the time they had left before they died. There were seven chambers that were different colors, and the last chamber was black, which was the last chamber that represented death. I think the seven rooms symbolized the days until you die and the clock symbolized the time until you died.
The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado are two stories written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 18th century. Both of these stories are primarily focused on the mysterious and dark ways of the narrator. Since these stories were written by the same author, they tend to have several similarities such as the mood and narrative, but they also have a few differences. For instance, the characteristics of both narrators are different, but both stories portray the same idea of the narrator being obsessive over a certain thing.
In the ten years following 1836, Edgar Allan Poe established himself as a short story writer, writing the well known stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” in 1843 and “The Cask of Amontillado” in 1846. As dark as his nature was, the two stories were equally dark, one about a man killing an elderly man with a creepy eye, and the other about a rich dude killing someone who insulted him. As both of the tales possess main elements of murder and death, both of them also have elements that link the stories even more such as their protagonists, character motivations, and resolutions.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for some of the most horrifying stories ever written through out time. He worked with the natural world, animals, and weather to create chilling literature. Two most notable thrillers are “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe was infatuated with death, disfigurement, and dark characteristics of the world. He could mix characters, setting, theme,and mood in a way that readers are automatically drawn into reading. Both of these short stories have the same major aspects in common.
Authors use various styles to tell their stories in order to appeal to the masses exceptionally well and pass the message across. These messages can be communicated through short stories, novels, poems, songs and other forms of literature. Through The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven, it is incredibly easy to get an understanding of Edgar Allen Poe as an author. Both works describe events that are melodramatic, evil and strange. It is also pertinent to appreciate the fact that strange plots and eerie atmospheres are considerably evident in the author’s writings. This paper compares and contrasts The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven and proves that the fear of uncertainty and death informs Edgar Allen Poe’s writings in the two works
The two short stories of “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black cat” by renowned author Edgar Allen Poe exemplifies the darkness of what a person can succumb to in certain situations. Both of these marvels share important realizations of thought and subconscious guilt’s. These short stories are used as an example of how two different people in two different situations can have the same reaction in the way of killing someone without remorse. Anger and hatred are major factors in simultaneous tells. The topic for this discussion is to discuss the similarities and differences of these two short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. Could there be more to what actually happens? Do both characters of these stories experience real supernatural events which cause them to lose it or is it a mental reaction which causes the mind to do things that are not
Poe presents the narrators of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" as devious, obsessed characters. Both are overpowered by the need to consume the life of their victim. Though they use different strategies to carry out the murders in different ways, obsession is the driving force in both. It is this obsession that inspires them to design cunning strategies and carry out the executions.
The first technique Poe uses in both stories is symbolism, which aids the reader in understanding the theme. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism to aid the reader in teaching the theme that death is inevitable. While explaining the setting, Poe describes a black room with red windows and then begins
Like many of Poe's other works, the Tell-Tale Heart is a dark story. This particular one focuses on the events leading the death of an old man, and the events afterwards. That's the basics of it, but there are many deep meanings hidden in the three page short story. Poe uses techniques such as first person narrative, irony and style to pull off a believable sense of paranoia.
Poe reinforces issues of morality in "The Tell-Tale Heart" through the state of madness. In this story, Poe provides an analysis of paranoia and mental worsening or deterioration. Poe distributed this story in great detail to intensify the murderer’s (i.e. It’s ironic how the narrator loves the old man, but the narrator compassionately plans to kill the old man because of his evil eye. This situation underscores virtue through the contradiction in how the narrator plans to kill the old man but he somehow has affection towards the old man.
Edgar Allen Poe was an American Writer who wrote within the genre of horror and science fiction. He was famous for writing psychologically thrilling tales examining the depths of the human psyche. This is true of the Tell-Tale Heart, where Poe presents a character that appears to be mad because of his obsession to an old mans, ‘vulture eye’. Poe had a tragic life from a young age when his parents died. This is often reflected in his stories, showing characters with a mad state of mind, and in the Tell Tale Heart where the narrator plans and executes a murder.
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, "The Telltale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death" are two very different stories. One is about a simple man, perhaps a servant, who narrates the tale of how he kills his wealthy benefactor, and the other is about a prince who turns his back on his country while a plague known as The Red Death ravages his lands. Yet, there are some similarities in both. Time, for instance, and the stroke of midnight, seem to always herald the approach of impending death. Both are killers, one by his own hand, the other by neglecting his country. One seeks peace, the other seeks pleasure, but both are motivated by the selfish need to rid themselves of that which haunts them, even at the expense of another's life. However, the point of this critique will show that their meticulous plans to beat that which torments them are undone by a single flaw in their character - overconfidence.
At the end of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe’s fascination with death is apparent when the narrator ruthlessly killed an old man with a disturbing eye, but felt so guilty that he confessed to the police. The narrator dismembered the old man’s body and hid them in the floor, confident that they were concealed. However, when the police came to investigate, the narrator heard a heart beating and began to crack under the pressure. Overcome with guilt, he confessed that he murdered him and pulled up the floorboards. The narrator exclaimed, “But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision!” (“Heart” 4). Although the narrator was calm and confident at first, the guilt he experienced drove him mad, causing...
Three elements of literary work that truly sum up the theme of The Tell Tale Heart are setting, character, and language. Through these elements we can easily see how guilt, an emotion, can be more powerful than insanity. Even the most demented criminal has feelings of guilt, if not remorse, for what he has done. This is shown exquisitely in Poe's writing. All three elements were used to their extreme to convey the theme. The balance of the elements is such that some flow into others. It is sometimes hard to distinguish one from another. Poe's usage of these elements shows his mastery not only over the pen, but over the mind as well.