In Edgar Allan Poe’s works, there are many similarities between them and his life. There are plenty similarities to find when only focusing on two of his stories, The Tell Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. When paying close attention, it is easy to notice the similarities and differences between Poe’s life and his stories… The first topic to be discussed will be the similarities between the two tales. In both of the stories the murderers knew the men that they killed.
Also, in both stories the murderers hid the body of the victim. An important factor in a tale about murder, is that the killer has a motive to commit the crime. There are plenty of similarities between Poe’s stories, just as well, there are many differences between the tales also. Along with comparisons, there are also many contrast between The Tell Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. In The Tell Tale Heart the man killed out of insanity over the old man’s eye, but in The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator killed out of jealousy, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” In The Tell Tale Heart the narrator panicked and cut the body up in order to hide it, while the narrator in The Cask of Amontillado remains calm during and after the crime was committed.
Another difference between them is that the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” confessed to the crime out of guilt and insanity, “Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!” In The Cask of Amontillado the narrator is never caught. After looking at the difference’s between Poe’s work it is very entertaining to compare the stories to his life. Many of Poe’s stories and poems can be tied to events that have happened in his life. A lot of the hard times that he had had gone through in his life he used as motivation to write his poems and stories. For example the story “The Masque of the Red Death” is thought of to be related to the consumption (aka tuberculosis), which took the life of many of the women he loved. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the dying old man good be seen as Poe’s adoptive father on his death bed, and how the old mans eye made the murderer uncomfortable could be an analogy for how Poe’s father made him feel uncomfortable because he knew that his father did not love him.
The Term Paper on Story of the Underground Man
The Underground Man when confronted with reality sinks into his world of fantasy, and yet, realizes the depth of his fantasy in the real world.The Underground Man went to all sorts of strange places in an effort to amuse himself. Once he saw a man being thrown out of a window of a tavern and entered the tavern in the hopes that someone would throw him out of the window as well. Upon entering the ...
In The Cask of Amontillado the jealousy that the narrator had for Fortunato, is symbolic to how Poe’s stories being copied by other writers and being more popular in France then they were in America could drive him to become jealous. Those are a few tales that relate to Poe’s life. There are many more comparisons between his life and his works, but it just takes time to find them. Like many other writers, it is not uncommon for them to use similar themes in multiple stories of there’s. It is also very common for writer’s to use events that have happened in their lives to influence what they are writing about, like Poe. When reading stories by Poe or else more then one story by another writer, it is very entertaining to find similarities between the stories and the writer’s life..
