Miguel Bonilla Rivera
Instr. Adriana Dorado
INGL 3104, sec. 080
22 February 2013
The Evil Presence Since the discovery of philosophy by the Greek civilizations man has always tried to find the cause of many fundamental problems that are connected to the reality and existence of factors that contribute to these dilemmas but still remain unknown to humanity. One of the most controversial questions philosophy tries to answer is the origin of what we consider evil, who or what is connected to the main cause of the pain and suffering that goes on throughout the world. “Evil is when one purposefully causes pain, not pain caused by fault, knowing something is morally wrong, but still proceeds in doing so. Simply by the definition of evil,…show more content… On The main character in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, or the “narrator”, is considered a wreck due to his paranoia along with his mental and physical illness. Thoroughly reading the story the narrator claims that he is able to hear the beating of the old man’s heart even when he’s already dead which leads the readers to assume that the narrator may suffers from Tinnitus, a medical condition that causes auditory hallucinations, major sensitiveness to sound and can sometimes cause amplified hearing. Similarly, in the “Minister’s Black Veil” Hawthorne introduces a lively clergyman, a man that is loved by everyone in the village where he preaches, but as the story progresses wears a black piece of cloth to give the character a gloomy aspect and pushes the readers to question if the minister is actually hiding something from everybody. With the use of a nervous tone, a psychopath character with mental and physical problems and a house during the night as a setting, Edgar Allan Poe represented evil as a negative impulse, something that cannot simply be controlled. However, with the use of a small American village, a young clergyman and a black veil which is the key to the gloomy atmosphere in the “Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne represents evil as a secret sin that shall remain unrevealed for the rest of one’s life, thus concluding that the differences between characters, settings and tone presented in their writings contributes to change
