Both authors have to convince the reader that the main character is mad. How do they do this? Which portrayal is more effective? Why? Bradbury and Poe.

“You should have seen how wisely I proceeded – with what

caution – with  what foresight – with what dissimulation I

went to work.”

Bradbury uses Acton’s spontaneous approach to murder to show that he is unable to control his emotions, or to consider properly the consequences of the things he does, which most normal individuals would be able to do.  This quote shows two things: that the murder was unplanned, but secondly, the blaming of his subconscious for poor foresight, as if it is entirely disconnected from him.  This is an example of the attempts he makes to detach himself from the crime.

“…he hadn’t planned a murder, and his subconscious,

which may have known of the crime before its

commitment, had not even hinted he might need gloves…”

However, Bradbury provided Acton with a motivation for murder that is fairly understandable.  This motivation was that Acton had been deeply hurt by the possibility that his wife was having an affair, coupled with the fact that the man he believed she had been having the affair with had most probably manipulated Acton or made him feel inferior in the past.  The emotional pain this would have caused him then reached a climax when Huxley took away the one thing Acton felt was his and not Huxley’s.  This caused Acton to be unable to deal with it sensibly any longer. He exploded, and he killed Huxley.  Remember that Acton loathed and detested everything about Huxley – his wealth, his social life, his lavish lifestyle, his possessions (e.g. the antiques which Acton thought Huxley had used to set him up as Acton’s paranoia builds), his charisma which managed to gain an influential power over Huxley, and his charm with women.   A description at the beginning of “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl” describes what Acton saw when he looked at Huxley’s body, and it gives an insight into some of the reasons why Acton killed Huxley.  However, there are many other examples in the text.

 

“the exacting glitter of Huxley’s grey eyes” hints at the power Huxley held over Acton.

“The lips … were gaped to show … the nicotined canines, the gold inlaid molars.” – this suggests Huxley’s sociable lifestyle, (involving tobacco) and ‘the gold inlaid molars’ point to his wealth.

Could it be considered rational for Acton to kill Huxley?  Why did Bradbury choose not  to give his protagonist a totally incomprehensible reason to kill Huxley, or anyone else for that matter?  Surely this would be very effective in convincing the reader that his character was unstable?  Perhaps Bradbury wanted to find something that the reader would be able to understand about the character, otherwise there would be a danger that the reader would lose interest and stop reading.  Most stories need to relate themselves to something about the reader’s life to maintain a captive audience.  What happened in Acton’s life has been experienced by many other people - either another person behaving in a rude, manipulative or dominating way towards them, or an unfaithful partner.  Both these things make most people feel hurt, upset and possibly angered towards those responsible for making them feel that way.   By giving Acton this motivation which many people consider to be a normal reason to dislike (but not kill) someone else, Bradbury manages to suck the reader into the story in a similar way to Poe, who achieved it by using first person narrative.

        Meanwhile, Poe does not need to make his character relate to the reader by making his motivation understandable.  The way the character plans the murder is very logical, and he carries it out with the utmost care, as is shown by the quote that follows:

 

“And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his

door and opened it – oh so gently!”

It could be argued that this shows he is not completely insane because it shows that he is able to consider things very carefully and in a detailed way.  But it could also be suggested that the way Poe’s protagonist commits murder is completely unstable and worrying, when the motivation for murder - the desire to get rid of a person whose stare makes him feel uncomfortable -

“One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture  … Whenever

it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…”

and the way he boasts to the reader how proud he is of his achievement -

“I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that

no human eye - not even his - could have detected any

thing wrong.”

- is taken into account.  If Poe had given his character a rational motive then he might have been in danger of not managing to convince the reader that the character is insane.

        

        Without the inclusion of the thoughts and conversations of the two characters, both stories would barely exist, and the reader would know nothing about the mentalities of either character.  All that the stories would consist of would be the characters’ actions and other people’s interactions with them.  Both stories, if made into screenplays, would have a very small cast – there are only three characters besides the police in The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl; these are Acton, Huxley and Huxley’s drunken visitor.  In The Tell Tale Heart there are only two characters as well as the police who enter towards the end.  Because there is so little dialogue between characters (apart from the replayed ones between Huxley and Acton in The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl), a play would be very unlikely to be impressive for the audience without a great deal of narration or monologue.

        Both authors use characters’ thoughts and conversations either with themselves or in The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl conversations with Huxley from the recent past, to make the stories gripping.

        Beginning with The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, there is lots of internal monologue going on.  One example of this is as follows:

“He twisted [his hands] in slow deliberation … Why was he staring at them in this way? He enquired of himself.”

        Because Acton has no one to talk to, he feels the need to discuss ideas with himself, as he does not seem able to rely on himself to think straight.      

        Acton tends to be much more impulsive than Poe’s protagonist, who considers all of his actions very carefully.  However, both characters have things in common – one of which is the paranoia each develops.  Although each paranoia is slightly different – Poe’s protagonist is terrified of a faceless ‘danger’ while Acton fears that Huxley has ‘set him up’ for the murder by Huxley by encouraging him to leave his fingerprints all over the house. This paranoia of Acton’s is developed by replaying conversations that he had with his victim.  It is probable, though not certain, that Acton exaggerates many of the things that Huxley said.  For instance; “Feel this binding.  Feel of it.”  Acton emphasises the word ‘feel’, which Huxley would not have done when he said it.

        By believing his theory that Huxley had planned his own murder in order to get Acton put into prison (totally implausible) he manages to relieve himself of some of the tremendous feeling of guilt which is bearing down on him.  In fact everything that Acton does throughout the story is an attempt to ‘undo’ what he has done, or at least to try to forget or detach himself from his victim.  He is constantly trying to escape – most importantly from his conscience, but also from the police.

        An interesting idea is when Huxley’s drunken friend knocks on the door –

“I know you’re in there, Huxley!  Open up, dammit!  This is Billy-Boy, drunk as an owl, drunker than two owls.”

        It may be that what is said has little meaning, and that the words Bradbury used are just typical of what someone might say when they have had too much to drink.  However, surely it is a possibility at least that the ‘owl’ that the drunk likens himself to is a metaphor for what Acton is afraid of?  Owls are well known for their silent flight, and perhaps this suggests that Acton is very worried that something – the police or his conscience – will swoop in and catch him out without warning.  Is it also an idea that the owl is what he is trying to be – as “quiet” as possible so that he doesn’t let anyone know that it was him who killed Huxley?

        At the end of The Tell Tale Heart, the calm and collected outer shell of the murderer cracks, and the pressure that has been building up inside him finally explodes.  It is as if Acton and Poe’s protagonists are bombs; the ‘Acton bomb’ had a shorter time before it exploded (immediately after he killed Huxley) than the murderer’s bomb in The Tell Tale Heart, which was set to remain in one piece for a longer period of time.  Below are the key moments in each story when the character finally gives himself up or is caught anyway.

In The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, the story ends as follows:

                  

“He was half through the attic when the police officer walked up behind him with a gun.

                  ‘Done!’

On the way out of the house Acton polished the front doorknob his handkerchief and slammed it in triumph!”

In The Tell Tale Heart, the story finished slightly more dramatically:

        

“’Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more!  I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

        Both characters eventually (although one might suggest they have been unable to distinguish between reality and fiction right from the start) lose all grip on the real world.  There are many ways in which the author shows this, but one of them is by making the characters hallucinate or ‘hear things’.

        In The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, the first strange thing that Acton does is to begin to view the corpse as an innocent work of art.  Although at this point he is not hallucinating, he is certainly trying to make himself believe that what he sees is ‘not so bad’.  He uses the sculpture metaphor to try and make it seem more normal.

        Meanwhile, the first thing that is a little irrational in The Tell Tale Heart is Poe’s protagonist’s profound hate for the ‘Vulture Eye’.  The character believes that when the eye looks at him it is, possibly, peering at him which makes him feel uneasy – it intimidates him and he looks upon it as a threat.

        Acton soon becomes frantic as he realises that his fingerprints are “everywhere, everywhere.”  This discovery ignites a bizarre search for gloves, involving dozens of drawers.  It is unlikely that another person in the room would have been able to ‘see’ the fingerprints, as they are certainly not visible to the naked eye.  Perhaps the fingerprints that cover the walls and the furniture suggest the guilt Acton is feeling – he has dirtied and blackened the walls, but more worryingly for him, he has made himself guilt-ridden and dark inside.

        Towards the end of The Tell Tale Heart, the murderer believes he can hear his victim’s heart beating very loudly.  So loudly, he is afraid the neighbours may hear it.  Perhaps these palpitations mirror the stress in his own heart as the full weightiness of what he has done is sinking in.

        Finally, when Acton believes that spiders and their webs are coming out of the walls and ruining all the cleaning he has been doing, the most obvious idea is that the webs show that he feels, or very soon becomes entirely entrapped by his act.

         The way Acton feels immediately after murdering Huxley is in stark contrast with the second murderer’s reaction.  Acton immediately panics.  This manifests itself in a number of ways – he begins holding ‘free-for-all’ debates with himself, which become increasingly confrontational as his madness develops.  Also, the obsessive cleaning begins, as he tries (literally) to eliminate all evidence of his presence from the scene of the crime, as well as trying to remove responsibility from his shoulders. Everything Acton does is done under a relentless panic; he can barely believe what he has done, which is why he plays a disturbing game of make-believe, as he pretends the corpse is just a personality-less object, which he has made beautiful by some ‘sculptural clenching’ – i.e. throttling.  Because he is in a state of shock, he tries to force himself to believe he has just produced a sculpture using human flesh, rather than admit he has extinguished a life with his two hands.          

           In The Tell Tale Heart, the murderer is calm; he is proud of getting the job done in such wonderful style, impeccable timing and with meticulous contingency planning.  But although it is not shown on the surface to begin with, this supposed calculating, cold-blooded murderer is deeply affected by what he has done.  He tries to make everything seem ‘normal’ by constantly congratulating himself on the way in which he did it all –

“In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him.  I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.”

 He never refers to his emotional ties with his victim, whom he did admit to ‘loving’ earlier on.

        Poe’s protagonist has a totally implausible motivation for murder.  This is because he gets on well with his victim, apart from his eye which makes him feel ill at ease, but kills him anyway – this is not normal.  However, nobody likes to feel intimidated or threatened.  This character obviously had an acute problem with feeling these emotions, which reflects his paranoia and madness which existed before the murder took place.  

        It seems likely that the ‘Vulture-Eye’ fearer had low self-esteem, if he allowed himself to feel so incredibly threatened simply by the glare of a person’s eye.  The way he executes the murder is very well thought about and done.  Could it be that he wanted to do something with precision and skill – something special and unique – in order to prove his worthiness to himself or somebody else?  

        Why did Acton choose to murder Huxley?  The most popular answer would probably be ‘because he suspected Huxley of having an affair with his wife’.  This is because when Acton visits Huxley he questions him:

“Where’s my wife, Huxley?”

Although this is part of the reason, it is not the whole of it.  The main reason why Acton could no longer live with Huxley on the planet was because of the power Huxley had over him – his charm, personality, etc.  Acton shows us that this was his motivation for killing Huxley on a number of occasions.  E.g..

“Death made him a handsomer man to deal with”, and

“His hands lay upturned on the floor, pleading for the first time in their lives instead of demanding.”  

There are many other examples in the text which show the relationship between Huxley and Acton was not a balanced one.

The main difference between the two characters’ motivation for murder is this: in The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, Acton was not mad at the start of the story; it was the murder itself that sent him mad.  The jealousy, envy and obsession that he feels towards his victim, as I have already pointed out earlier on, mean that the reader feels empathy for the character.

In The Tell Tale Heart the murderer is already mad, and this is what causes him to commit murder.  He feels claustrophobia, paranoia, and as a result is scared of the ‘Evil Eye’ to the point of insanity.

At the beginning of The Tell Tale Heart, because the murderer-to-be is calm and confident that his crime will never be discovered, the sentences are controlled.  Later, as he becomes more agitated, this is reflected in the language used.  Poe uses lots of exclamation marks and italics to emphasise the crazy things being said.  The sentences are shorter or they are broken up by dashes, literally reflecting his nervous hysteria.  Sometimes the power of a sentence is built up by using three words or phrases, e.g. “I foamed – I raved – I swore!”

        Meanwhile, in The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, the text is written in a way which relates it to the victim – the reader learns a lot about the character’s personality from the text, which is different to The Tell Tale Heart where very little is discovered.

        When Acton realises on the first page, “It was done.  He could not change it back.”  This shows that although he has been strong and has affected a person as much as anyone can do (by killing them), he is actually left powerless rather than powerful.  From here on in the fear and the panic he feels is horrendous, which leads on to obsessive behaviour and madness.

        I would argue that the two most important aspects of each story that make each story effective are the different approaches to the murder (and the motivation) and the reactions to the murders.  The way the stories are told are also important, as they each create a gripping story as the reader is engaged in the plot by the way each one is written.  The approaches to the murders (either carefully calculated or spontaneous) are used to show the reader that the character is mad, and both Bradbury and Poe achieve this in different ways.

        The motivation for the murders are also interesting and used well to convince the reader that each character is mad; Poe’s protagonist is mad to begin with and this is what causes him to commit murder, while Acton is fairly sane in the beginning but the murder itself is what sends him to the point of insanity.

         Which portrayal is more effective?  Pathetic as it may sound, I cannot answer that question; I believe that both stories fantastically achieve what each author was trying to do, and each story is unique, possesses its own individual qualities (which I have looked at during the course of this investigation) and therefore there cannot be a single ‘winner’.

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