Comparison of Two Short Stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Essay Example

A majority of the stories and poems authored by Edgar Allen Poe deal with elements of horror. These stories are successful because it allows us to see inside the minds of murderers and maniacs from a first person narrative. “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Bernice” are two examples of these stories. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the main character commits a murder the he believes he gets away with, but he is caught due to his own guilt and insanity. In “Bernice”, the main character is obsessive with Bernice’s teeth and removes them from her mouth after she has died and been buried. These stories attempt to provide a human perspective of these terrible actions, since a temporary lapse in sanity can result in a commitment of terrible deeds. However, others argue that Poe wrote these tales because he was simply interested in providing the audience with a good story. Yet others claims that these words were produced as a consequence of the author’s own insanity.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the tone used at the beginning of the story makes the main character sound almost human. He murdered a man he seemed to care for although he didn’t know why. After he hid the body, he seemed to be at peace until the cops arrived. While the main character did not recognize that his actions were wrong consciously, his subconscious kept tricking him into thinking that he heard the heartbeat of the  man he had killed and whose body was hidden in the walls. At the end of the story, the man is unable to take the pressure anymore and admits his guilt. We see him go through a cycle where he appears to be human in the beginning, uncaring in the middle, and human again in the end. Therefore, even sanity is an indicator of humanity.

The tone of “Bernice” is dark as well. The author presents the insanity of the main character by describing his personality and actions. At the beginning of the story, he is in love with a beautiful woman named Bernice and they had plans to marry. However, she began to suffer from a terrible sickness that began to degrade all aspects of her beauty with the exception of her teeth. The main character began to slowly slip into obsessive insanity regarding her teeth and would blank out for minutes at a time. After Bernice had died, he had unknowingly dug up her body and removed her teeth. While many readers would describe this character as crazy, it is clear that he was unsure of how to convey his emotions about the death of his loved one. We don’t typically consider this act as a normal action, but it is certainly a human one.

It is clear that Poe wrote these stories in an attempt to allow his readers to connect with his characters, despite their apparent insanity. Critics of this view believe that Poe was crazy himself, and that these stories were purely a reflection of this mental state. However, Poe wrote many poems and short stories with this similar theme of insanity. While Poe was certainly considered to be an individual that thinks outside the box, it is likely that the individuals with this opinion of his work have not thoroughly read and analyzed his pieces. If they had, they would be able to understand Poe’s characters just as well as he had intended. Literary excellence should not be confused for insanity.

Works Cited

Poe EA. Bernice. 1855. 13 February 2015.

Poe EA. The Tell-Tale Heart. 1850. Web. 13 February 2015.