In the eyes of both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, humankind had a definite dark side. Although they didn’t share the exact same beliefs, they were very similar. While Hawthorne believed that all humans were sinners and the only good in anything came from god, Poe believed that everyone had two parts to them: a social self and a inner beast. Poe believed that people spent their lives doing good deeds to hide their inner beast. He saw all humans as evil creatures who could do no good, and had another personality that hid their true self. This is showcased in both The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart, where the Narrators in both commit a heinous crime and try to cover it up, but end up revealing the truth on their own. On the other …show more content…
In The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator speaks of an old man that he was actually quite fond of, but needed to kill simply because of his haunting pale blue eye. He insist he’s not insane, but it's quite obvious he is. Earlier it was mentioned how the eye is a popular symbol, and it has the same meaning in The Tell-Tale Heart that it does in The Black Cat. The old man’s eye can seemingly see right through the narrator's social character and straight into his inner beast, something everyone possesses. He spends an entire week sneaking into the old man’s apartment, just watching and waiting for the right moment to attack. After finally killing the old man, he hides him in in the floorboards of the home. The police arrive after a call from an alarmed neighbor, and all is going well until the narrator believes he hears a heartbeat. The heartbeat symbolizes the conscious, seeing as neither the police officers can hear it.”Louder! Louder! Louder! It is the beating of his hideous heart!” It’s as if the narrator's conscious is driving him out of his mind. It really shows Poe’s believes in duality and how every human is an evil being plagued with a conscious. No matter how hard one can try to bury their wrong doings, the conscious will always reveal the beast’s wrongdoings.”Villains! I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here! Here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!” His …show more content…
All humans are evil, whether it be by their inner beast or original sin, they are both no good. Poe saw all humans as outright monstrous, evil creatures plagued with a conscious that would always reveal the truth. On the other hand, Hawthorne saw all humans as equally evil, with pride as the underlying sin. Either way, both saw and wrote about the darker side of humanity, and the conscious always came out in the
Throughout, the narrator’s madness is depicted through his unrealistic rationale to kill the old man because of his opposition toward his eye. Similarly, in another Poe tale, The Black Cat, Poe uses a comparable contrast between logic and an irrational resulting behavior. In this story, the narrator kills his cat that he claims to love, illustrating the narrator’s madness. In both stories, the narrators commit atrocious crimes without any semblance of logical motive. In the Tell-Tale Heart, Poe has the narrator tell a tale of logic and rational thinking, but ends up conveying madness in the purest sense of the
The 19th century American poet, Edgar Allan Poe, had been plagued by grief from an early age. He was an amazing poet and author who just happened to have a darker story. Many who have studied this prestigious man feel that his works, though magnificent, were extremely dark. Some believe it was nothing more then a fancy for him to spin such gruesome tales. Others feel his work was manipulated by the misfortune of his past. These people have actually found evidence that agrees with this statement. The works of Edgar Allan Poe were inspired by the history and life style of the author. The evidence is evident, when people look back and examine the author, his life, and his writings closely.
Edgar Allan Poe has a dark sense of literary meaning. Within "The Tell-Tale Heart" it 's shown when Poe incorporates dark elements of literacy through the guilt of a murder. Which became forced out by the hypothetical beating of a heart.
Hawthorne’s stories develop a narrative that explores the nature of inherent imperfection and sin. In Young Goodman Brown, the Devil figure says to his “children” that, “Evil is the nature of Mankind. Evil must be your only happiness” (9). The Devil figure speaking to his followers clearly states that sin is
Popular literature is incomplete without the names of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both of these authors lived in the same time period, yet lived very opposite lives. In fact, Poe received notoriety for criticizing Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Poe, 1847) In his career, he wrote several critiques of Hawthorne’s work. On a personal level, Poe often disagreed with how often Hawthorne used allegory. As a literary element that many people use, Poe was not a fan. He once stated that: “I allude to the strain of allegory which completely overwhelms the greater
Melville explained in his essay "Hawthorne and his Mosses": "this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free." Melville is claiming that this is a part of Hawthorne the man, but this undoubtedly carries over into his work as well.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe are considered masters of American gothic fiction. They used similar gothic elements in their writing and used it to build up a sense of impending doom. Even today numerous readers enjoy, study, and discuss the gothic elements both utilized in their work. Gothic writing is a style that is concerned with the dark side of society, an evil that lies within the self. Poe and Hawthorne contributed stories which contained dark struggles between characters and society with its rules of order of the time. Gothic writing is fantasy meant to entertain despite the fact that it depicts the political and social problems
Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of American literature's finest writers; his writing style was very distinct and unusual in some aspects. It is his background that provided this ambiguous and complex approach to writing. Hawthorne's New England heritage has, at times, been said to be the contributing factor in his works. The Puritan view of life itself was considered to be allegorical, their theology rested primarily on the idea of predestination and the separation of the saved and the damned As evident from Hawthorne's writings his intense interest in Puritanical beliefs often carried over to his novels such as, Young Goodman Brown, The Scarlet Letter, and The Minister's Black Veil just to name a few of the more well known pieces of his work.
Edgar Allen Poe was known for his dark-romanticism writings which evoked horror in readers. Seen specifically in his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, readers are able to get into the mind of the mentally ill narrator who murders an elderly man, one whom he claimed to love. Poe created conflict in this story by having the narrator admit to loving the man and having him be his caretaker. Conflict, and the story line, is created because it makes readers question why he would commit such a heinous crime as killing and dismembering the man. Readers eventually find out that it is the elderly man’s eye that pushes the narrator to do what he does. The narrator is trying to justify his actions and prove his sanity by explaining how he observes
Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were writers of the American gothic genre. They both used the elements of horror and mystery in their writing styles, writing about the dark side of humanity and the evil that lives within the human mind. Gothic writing focuses on the dark side of humanity and both Poe and Hawthorne captured this style well in their use of themes, symbols, and narration that focused on darkness and evil with their characters fighting various psychological issues. However, Poe’s stories are told in the first person narrative and he focuses on one human psychological effect, looking at man’s thoughts from within his mind and how his behavior then affects his surroundings. He also tends to build a sense on impending doom somewhat stronger than Hawthorne. Hawthorne, on the other hand uses the third person and focuses more on how man’s thoughts and behaviors are the results of what is happening around him. His stories also tend to be more of a romantic nature than Poe’s and he tends to create stories of conflicting interpretations to share lessons of life.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to
Poe uses the dark side of human nature to create a demoralizing and daunting story in both “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In “The Cask of Amontillado,” one can see that the dark side of human nature is conveyed through Montresor’s actions of murdering his enemy, Fortunato. As seen in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the dark side of human the race is shown through the protagonists dark and treacherous actions resulting in the death of an innocent, old man. The dark side of human nature, and the dreadful actions that are taken within the stories, are prime examples of the devilish and demonic forces within our world. The dark side of human nature is expressed in “The Cask of Amontillado and “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the protagonist’s actions of guilt, deceit and insanity.
In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, is about a narrator, that kill and old man because of an idea that came to his brain for the old man’s eye. Once he determines to kill the old man, the narrator formulates a plan that fully acknowledges the effects of his actions. As he begins the explanation of his plan, he assures the readers with a sense of pride “how wisely[he proceeds] with what caution with what foresight with what dissimulation [he goes] to work”(1). The day he had killed him, he felt different. The narrator was just thinking about the man that he had killed. The narrator had killed a man which was an action that could leave to be important. He notices something about the man that is haunting him day and night. Trying to see whatś wrong with, the old man, he notices that “every night just at midnight [he finds] the eye always closed, but the old man who [vexes him, but his eye”(1). Every day it was hunting him down. He was just thinking about, the old man’s evil eye. He thought the old man had an evil eye, so he had a thought to kill the man. The officers came to his house because they suspected from him. Suspecting the narrator's guilty the
Poe’s writing style was much like that of Hawthorne’s, but drew from the darker side of romance creations. This gothic mood believed in the dark truths of the human heart, which are the ends and motivations for many of his stories. Human corruption and violence ends in murder in “The Black Cat”. Gothic writings move more into the supernatural side, which lets observer of the see a living person in the picture at his first, sleepy glance.
Throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe, tries to convey the central themes of guilt and insanity to the audience. How the narrator tells the story proves the theory completely. He tells his audience how he plans to kill the old man, and he takes them with him every step of the way. While telling the readers how he murders the man, he also assures them that he is not mad or insane. However, the readers know that he is crazy because he kills a harmless old man, that he claims to love, solely because he fears his eyeball. He is trying to convince himself of this, as well as, trying to convince his audience. Though he proves to have a mental incapability, he still shows signs of morality and guilt. The beating heart demonstrates this human quality that he obtains. When the narrator uses the lantern in his plan, he shows signs of