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The Tell Tale Heart Comparative Essay

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Everyone makes choices that they regret. People wish they can go back in time and fix that one mistake. Yet, they can never take back what they really did. The short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and the song, “Apologize” sang by OneRepublic both convey the theme how you can’t take things back. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the plot starts with the narrator watching an old man sleep at midnight for a week. On the eighth night, he decides it’s finally time to kill him. Later on, as he almost got away with the crime he keeps hearing the man’s heartbeat leads him to confess. The song, “Apologize” is about someone in a relationship, who would do anything for that person...that view soon changed. The other person in the relationship made a mistake. It leads them to beg for forgiveness, yet didn’t succeed. Overall, the theme: you can’t take back what you’ve done is inferred through both texts. In the short story the theme was shown through symbolism. While, the song conveyed the theme through emphasized words. …show more content…

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” Edgar Allan Poe uses a heart beat and time to symbolize regret. “[The narrator] was suffering more than [the narrator] could bear, from their smiles, and from that sound. Louder, louder, louder! Suddenly [the narrator] could bear it no longer,” this incident provides proof of that (Poe 67). It shows how the heartbeat lead the narrator to confess, when he almost got away with murder. This showed no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn’t hide what happened. In a similar fashion, the song “Apologize” emphasized how it’s too late to apologize. This showed how when you make mistake saying sorry is not enough. It doesn’t create a clean slate or changes what you have done. Once something happens, it can’t be changed and you have to live with it. In both text, both made mistakes and they weren’t able to take it

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Horror Genre Literary Analysis Have you ever heard of the story “Tell Tale Heart” and “The Monkey`s Paw?” The Tell Tale Heart is mainly about a man who doesn`t have a problem with the old man, but for some reason it`s something about the old man`s blue eye. “The Monkey`s Paw” is about a paw that a sergeant gave to a man name Mr. White. The paw is giving him three wishes, but will they come true? Both of these stories has to deal with or meet the criteria for the horror genre because they contain fear, mystery, surprise, and suspense.

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Poe 's The Tell Tale Heart, tells the story of a murder, told from the point of view of the murderer who is the protagonist of the short story. The protagonist, who represents himself as a man who is believed to be insane by everyone, but who believes himself to be sane enough. However, the description of his conditions, as hearing continuous noises, and having unexplained motivation to kill his neighbor, actually suggests the possibility that he is actually insane, or at least psychologically disturbed. As the plot progresses, the murder is committed, and while two policemen arrive to investigate the murder, the protagonist seems to be able to distract them. However, as might be expected according to the development of the plot, and in consistence with the character of the protagonist as a psychologically disturbed man, he fails to keep his calmness, and ends up confessing his crime to the policemen, while hallucinating voices coming from the heart of the dead neighbor.

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