4.William Acton attitude towards the dead body and the crime surprised us ‘… he had never thought of himself as a sculpture…. He realized by some sculpturing, clenching and re-modeling and twisting of human clay….’ He saw himself as an artist he had physical contact with the dead body. He further saw the murder himself as an artistic creation ‘…yes it was an artistic creation…’ this in itself shows that his attitude was irrational and not a normal reaction.
The opening showed calmness but then Acton began to panic, ‘rush get away….’ Later he became dazed and shocked at himself he went onto feel stunned ‘… his mouth dropping, stunned but what he realized and what he saw…’ he eventually began to get control of his emotions but continued to show irrational behaviour.
In the beginning Acton was talking to himself, trying to remember where he had left his fingerprints ‘…mind getting your burgundy, Acton, Eh? I’m terribly tired you understand?’
This shows how his imagination was disturbed and distorted by what had happened. Huxley probably did say ‘mind getting the burgundy…?’ But it is unlikely that Huxley had suggested Acton left his fingerprints. When he starts talking to the dead body this idea that Huxley made him go around the house touching items continued. ‘… And did your subconscious tell you to make me run about the house handling, touching, fondling books, dishes, doors, chairs…?’ Then he eventually started arguing with himself.
The flashbacks start off by becoming distorted and continued to be mixed up with his imagination when he talks about the antique furniture. Acton became obsessed with what he had touched and handled, throughout he said things like,
“I’m certain I didn’t touch that”
“ And I’m certain I didn’t touch that”
He also used words like ‘handling,’ ‘touching,’ ‘fondling,’ ‘feeling’, which suggests that his idea that Huxley had made him handle things in the house was taking over his thoughts.
His actions were also repetitive, the way he cleaned and also cleaned and polished when the doorbell rang, ‘Acton froze, staring at the door, the clock, the door, the clock’. These two actions could suggest this was not normal and that they were the sort of actions that a madman would do.
Acton’s first attempts to clean traces of his presence at the murder scene were logical, when he cleaned the doorknob, and the area around the body. As time went by his cleaning were illogical, cleaning every room, ‘he followed the banister upstairs started pulling away furniture’s away from the wall and then …wiped them clean of years old dust, eventually ending up in the attic.’ ‘The entire house was polished to a brilliance.’ By this time his actions were illogical and that of a madman.
There was an inter-textual reference during one of Acton’s argument with himself when he said, ‘out damned spot, Eh, Acton,?’ this is a reference from Macbeth when Lady Macbeth who murdered King Duncan dreamed that she could never wash the blood from her hand. By this time he seemed to be convinced that his fingerprints were everywhere and that he could not be able to wipe them all away.
A paragraph where there is no punctuation suggests panicking where he looked back and forth between the chandelier and Huxley’s body suggested a rapid movement,
“…he looked at the chandelier
and looked away
and looked back at the chandelier
and looked at Huxleys body… and then
at the crystal chandelier…” the way that this paragraph is written makes you want to read it the way as I have laid it out as it shows the hurried way that he carried out his actions looking backwards and forward at the chandelier. Even the sentence before the paragraph that has no punctuation in it, suggests that Acton is panicking or mad,
“his fingers twitched at his side” which also could show nervousness in this situation.
The story also has spider symbolism with Acton seeing tiny little webs suggested that he be being tangled or caught in a web. He wiped these webs down which shows he feel that he is being trapped and tangled in a web. Also the spiders that came out and spun the webs, he thought that when he looked at them they went away, “Each time he stared directly at them, the spiders dropped back into the wood work, only to spindle on out (come out) as he retreated (went away). Perhaps he imagined they were watching him because they knew he had committed a murder. He also relates the webs to his obsession with leaving fingerprints, when it says, “Tiny, tiny little webs, no bigger than ironically, your - finger!.” The exclamation mark makes you think it joins up with touch and fingerprints.
5. In the story of the ‘Tell Tale Heart,’ the narrator addresses the reader directly in the first person and from the beginning tries to convince the reader that he was not mad. Even in the first sentence he writes ‘…why will you tell that I am mad’?
The narrators actions are deliberate, as night after night he crept into the old mans room silently, not wanting to disturb him, ‘his room was black as… continued then he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.’
Which suggests he was careful and calm. He continued to cut off the arms and legs from the body and hide them under the floorboards, there was no blood to be found anywhere, he had made sure of that.
He seemed relieved after he committed the murder, ‘I then smiled gaily to see the deeds so far done… the old man was dead… his eyes won’t trouble me anymore…’
The repetition in this story is not only in the action when he enters the room, but also when he is telling the story after he did the murder and he repeats the words over and over when he says ‘ it grew louder-louder-louder.’ Also, ‘I felt that I must scream or die –again- hark louder, louder, louder, louder’ when he describes the beating of the old man’s heart which he imagines is coming from underneath the floor board. This is also a repeat of what he hears just before he kills the old man, when the old man’s heart is beating heavily. He obviously could not hear the beating of the old man’s heart, the old man is dead, so it suggest that he is mad and his imagination is beginning to play tricks with him.
Like the other story, ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’, where Acton’s imagination is also very disturbed. In this story the narrator’s imagination is disturbed as he hears ringing in his ears. ‘…My head hurts, and I fancied a ringing in my ear… it continued and became more distinct… but it continued and gained definitiveness…’, also when he heard, ‘a low, dull quick sound-much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.’
This continued, he imagined it was the beating of the old man’s heart that he heard before the murder. This beating became louder, louder and louder, he believed that the police could hear the beating also and that they were just ‘… making a mockery of my horror…’. By this time I believe he was completely mad and he eventually gave himself up telling the police officers to rip up the floorboards so that they could find the body.
6. ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’ by Ray Bradbury is more effective in the portrayal of a madman. By showing throughout the story how his actions became more of those of a madman. In the beginning he began to see his murder as ‘an artistic conception…’ ‘the sculpturing of clay from warmth to coldness…’
Then he hallucinated ‘…his hand hovered before his eyes, floating, turning…’
This could be linked to Macbeth when the dagger could be seen in his imagination floating in front of the mad Macbeth. After this he began cleaning very calmly, later becoming very frantic. He then became obsessed with cleaning his fingerprints off everything, going to places in the house where he never been, ‘…he began to scrub the wall, up and down, back and forth, up and down, as high he could stretch and as low as he can bend.’
At this point there were other actions of repetition such as ‘…His mouth slipped open and his tongue moved across his lips and he looked at the chandelier and looked away and looked back at the 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.
