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The Restless Dead: A Literary Analysis

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In the undead fiction, the characters can be divided into two major parts: the living characters and the undead characters. The main plots will develop through the interactions between these two parts. The interactions can help the reader to understand the theme. In the book “The Restless Dead”, there are different types of undead stories. The stories I’m going to analyze are Chris’s “The House and The Locket”, Marcus’s “The Heart of Another”, Bram’s “Dracula” and Annette’s “Kissing Dead Boys”. These stories express their themes through the interactions between living and undead characters.
The first story I will analyze is “The House and The Locket” written by Chris Wooding. This story is a Gothic ghost story, which uses the interaction between the narrator and his future family. The narrator went into an old house one day with his best friend, Henry. In this house, there are three doppelgangers: a ghostly woman, a …show more content…

This story tells a about how the narrator communicates with her heart donor through the heart. The narrator was transplanted a heart of a murdered dockworker. After the heart was transplanted, the narrator started to have weird dreams. She dreamed about how the heart was taken out form the body. There is “a knife slide into me, slitting the pericardium”(Sedgwick 80). Then she found out this dream is not about her, it’s about the heart donor. Later, she dreamed the heart donor did not die naturally; he was murdered (Sedgwick 84). Following the lead of heart, our narrator figured out the murderer was her tutor. The narrator and the dockworker interacted through the heart and the dreams. The heartbeat is the proof of alive. The spirit of undead is left in the heart and transplanted together. Thus this interaction delivered that the sin will be discovered one day. Those two stories are ghosts or unspecific undead readings; the analysis of the following parts will be about vampire

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However, the author makes the speaker talk to it and make resolutions with it, that the heart and the speaker will both forget the person that broke their heart

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It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or hardden, so it can´t feel pain, yarnin, regret.” In this sentence she uses words such as pain and regret to show that the heart is just a muscle, an organ that can´t get hurt, that can´t feel pain. On the second paragraph she says: “I can´t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here it´s all yours, now- but you´ll have to take me too.

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A Lesson After Dying “I turned from him and went into the church. Irene Cole told the class to rise with their shoulders back. I went up to the desk and turned to face them. I was crying.” (Gains, 256)

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He refers to himself as Death, implying he has all knowledge and power over the old man. The reader becomes filled with dread as the man patiently waits to kill. The imagery portrayed in “The Tell-tale Heart” increases the demented tone that the narrator projects as the main character waits to strangle the old man. Every night, for a week, the murderer would “look in” upon the victim as he slept.

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On the one hand, the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” seems very much in control of his actions. He confesses the murder of the old man is premeditated. The idea of killing him indeed “haunted” him “day and night” (68). So, for eight nights in a row, he viciously takes pleasure in very slowly opening the old man’s door to observe his “vulture eye” (68) during his sleep. Even when the old man feels his presence in the room, he manages to take over his urges and stays still “for a whole hour” (71) behind the door, feeding his diabolic mind with his victim’s fear.

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Are we able to control our destiny or the outside forces? There are very good arguments about that but at the end of the day, I feel like we don’t control what happens to use in the future. Especially after I read the book, “A Lesson Before Dying”. Jefferson, the main character, was executed for something he didn't even do. He had a future and it was all gone due to what he couldn't control.

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The Tell Tale Heart is narrated anonymously yet extremely in depth, leaving the reader with an ominous perspective. The use of first person creates a mysterious interpretation for the readers as we construe the tale from an individuals point of view, looking into the story. The story builds up upon the narrator’s guilt over intentionally killing an innocent man. A suspicious neighbor cries out for help after hearing a shriek and three policemen investigate the situation. During the climax, the narrator is at the greatest intensity of guilt and craze.

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“The old man 's hour had come … In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound … it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was

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