The Tell-Tale Heart Comparative Essay

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“The Tell-Tale Heart,” written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843, shows the mental deterioration of an unnamed narrator. Similarly, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” also centers around a nameless narrator who is mentally declining. However, it was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman almost fifty years later. In both stories, certain aspects of the narrators’ surroundings cause this degradation. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” these effects originate from the wallpaper in her room. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” they arise equally from the eye and the heart of the old man, the narrator's neighbor whom he murders. Along with these objects, the settings of both short stories contribute to the languishing of the narrator’s intellects. Despite being written by different …show more content…
Pitcher asserts that the narrator becomes mentally trapped because the eye is all he can think about (232). He explains that this mental captivity forces the narrator closer to insanity (Pitcher 232). Similarly, Witherington states that the narrator’s unhealthy obsession with the eye is what leads him to kill (471). Therefore, the narrator lets something very trivial drive him to murder. Witherington explains that no sane man could be capable of murder merely because of the appearance of an eye (472). In the story, this fixation is evident when the narrator explains that “one of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-- a pale blue eye… whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold. I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 38). This shows that the narrator could not cease thinking about the eye. He explains that it is this obsession which leads him to murder. The old man is the narrator’s neighbor; therefore his eye was part of the narrator’s surroundings. As a result, the eye leads the man to develop an unhealthy fixation and ultimately commit a terrible act of murder. This further develops the theme because the presence of the eye in the narrator’s surroundings leads to an obvious decline in his mental
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