A Tale Of Two Murders

6 Pages 1510 Words

A tale of two murders: Comparing the "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart.” Edgar Allan Poe has often been considered the father of the psychological thriller. Two of his best examples are "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado." Both are excellent short stories that tell of murder, revenge, and madness. The narrators of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the "The Cask of Amontillado" are trying to convince the reader of their sanity but have only become victims of the madness, which they had hoped to escape. By analyzing the differences and the similarities of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," one can see that Poe uses a certain approach in creating these two works. Poe has been the center of many critical studies; most trying to dissect his mind and get into the heart and meaning of his work, "Criticism now tends to ask, not whether Poe is a great writer, but why" (Buranelli 132). Poe's characters in both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" confess of murder. Not only do they both commit murder, but they also escape external punishment and suffer endless internal turmoil. Therefore, "The punishment comes not from a church, a law, or even from society: it comes from some inner compulsion of the evil-doer himself who suffers...Thus he has willed his crime and he wills his retribution" (Davidson 189). Both characters take the lives of the men in the stories with little regard, "These characters are themselves god-players" (Davidson 189). In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator confesses to the unsuspected police to receive his punishment, " in this respect the god easily passes into the devil and becomes his maker and his slayer both"(Davidson 190). In both stories, the reader becomes quickly aware of the fact that both narrators are not reliable. The narrators feel that they performed the murders so calmly so there is no way they could be mad. In both stories the narrator is continuall...