Compare and Contrast "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and "A Confession Found In A Prison In The Time Of Charles II" by Charles Dickens

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Compare and Contrast “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Confession Found In A Prison In The Time Of Charles II” by Charles Dickens

We have looked at two different short stories by two different authors. The first story is called ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe and the second is called ‘A Confession found in a prison in the time of Charles II’ by Charles Dickens. I have found out that that they both have a murder theme in common. There are also other similar themes between the two poems such as early confessions.

        The plot in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is about a mad man that has the motive to kill an old man because of the look of his eye. We know that the mad is mad because he says on a number of occasions that he is not ‘mad’. This repetitiveness shows some evidence of a degree of madness. He also claims to ‘love the old man’ and says that ‘he has never wronged me’ but still has every intension on killing him because his eye ‘resembled that of a vulture’. The idea of wanting to kill, a man because his eye is like that of a vulture’s eye, is not a plausible reason. This backs-up the idea that the author is mad. The man himself does not know where this idea came from, and I know this because he says ‘It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain. He also confesses early to what his intensions are for the murder which is an important point to consider when comparing the two stories.

        In ‘A Confession found in a prison in the time of Charles II’ there is also a motive to kill but it’s not an old man. The victim in this story is a young boy. The motive to kill is that he sees the boy’s mother in the eyes of the boy. I know this because it says ‘His mother’s ghost was looking from his eyes’. ‘I was afraid of her, she haunted me’, this makes the situation worse because it adds to the motive for killing the boy. The boy could also be a problem in the future.

        We know quite quickly that all is not well for both narrators because they both hint of the outcome, and confess early. In ‘A confession found in a prison in the time of Charles II’ the narrator says ‘I will set down the naked truth without disguise’ showing that he will reveal the whole story. He also says ‘My name is written in the black-book of death,’ which shows that he is line for execution for something that he has done wrong. The same sort of theme applies for ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ when the narrator quotes ‘How calmly I can tell you the whole story.’ This shows that something is going to be confessed in the near future.

        Both authors use short sentences at the beginnings of their stories. They use this writing technique to build tension. This is shown better in the ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ line 15 where he starts of the paragraph with three sentences in the first line. ‘Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.’        

In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ the only relationship is between the old man and the narrator. They seemed to be good friends at the beginning of the story, as the narrator claims to ‘Love the old man.’ ‘He had never wronged me’ shows that the old man had never done anything to offend the narrator or to turn the narrator against him. This shows that the relationship between the two was a very stable friendly relationship. It also shows that there were no grudges or jealousy between them when the narrator quotes ‘For his gold I had no desire’ showing that he wanted noting from the old man. So what was the problem?

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In ‘A confession found in a prison in the time of Charles II’ there are many more relationships going on in the story. The relationships consist of two brothers, one of which is the narrator. The brothers are married to two sisters. The narrator especially hates his brother’s wife because he appears to be afraid of her. ‘I was afraid of her; she haunted me.’ This quote shows the reason why he is scared of her and the reason is that she haunts him. However, while the narrator was abroad for whatever reason, he found out that his brother’s wife ...

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