In ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’ William Acton’s wife had left him for Huxley. Acton went to Huxley’s house looking for his wife and ended up killing Huxley by strangling him to death. He started feeling really paranoid that he started polishing of his fingerprints off everything around him from walls to doorknobs to fruits. While he tried to prevent his fingerprints from being traced the police officer caught him.
Both characters had different motives to their crime. Their attitude was different. Acton had no intention of committing a murder, it wasn’t planned in anyway, whereas the young man in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ had his every move planned. Acton walked into Huxleys’ home innocently looking for his wife. Acton saw this as an opportunity when Huxley ‘falls to the ground cleverly’. In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ the young man had crept into the old man’s house specifically to kill him. By throwing the bed over him, he knew he would suffocate to death.
After killing Huxley, Acton is traumatised. Acton constantly sees his fingerprints all over the house. His guilty conscience doesn’t let him get over it. Acton frantically runs around the house trying to get rid of his fingerprints, and by talking to himself constantly he starts to prove to the audience that he’s going mad. As people say that the first sign of madness is when you start talking to yourself. Actons’ flashbacks are engaged with his thoughts, he has a flashback of where he went in the house then he goes there and sees fingerprints there. Not knowing whether or not he had actually touched that part of the house. By doing this Acton doesn’t realise he’s actually leaving more traces of his fingerprints around. This is another part where the author tries to make the reader believe that Acton is going mad.
When the young man murdered the old man in ‘Tell-Tell Heart’, he is traumatised as well. He hears the sound of the old mans’ heartbeat in his ears. The heartbeat is the sign of his guilty conscience. This guilty conscience makes the character go mad which leads to him turning himself in because he couldn’t handle it any more.
The story of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is written in 1st person perspective and ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’ is written in 3rd person perspective. In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ the character asks himself rhetorical questions and he answer’s it with inner dialogue. The sentences represent the heartbeat. Every time a character commits a crime or is scared the sentence length decreases. The sentence length is a metaphor for the heartbeat beating faster. The sentences get sharper and shorter as the character gets more paranoid. In ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’ Acton, again, asks himself rhetorical questions.
From both of the stories I think that ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is more effective because it’s written in 1st person perspective. This is so that the reader or the audience can enter the mind of the character, which gives them a better understanding of the character, to understand his thoughts and feelings. Also, as it is written in 1st person perspective it seems as if the young man is telling himself the story. The author uses this narrative technique to portray the concept of madness across to the audience.
