The Tell Tale Heart1 gr. B

 

The Tell-Tale Heart

After the quiz, here are a few elements we need to stress :

- the story starts with TRUE ! But can we trust the narrator ?

- There's no description whatsoever of either the narrator, or his victim. The narrator could be a man or a woman. We don't know much about his relation to the old man.

- The story focuses on the crime itself and its preparation. The narrator tells it, insisting that he's not mad.

- The action takes place in a room, like in tFotHoU.

- The narrator says he has over acuteness of the senses, like in
tFotHoU.

Similarities

•  we can't trust both narrators. In FHU, he's imagining things. In TTH, he's lying.
  
• in both stories, there's the topic / theme of death and madness 
• no female character
• the language
• acuteness of the senses
  

 

Differences 

• In the TTH, the narrator / hero is an antagonist. In FHU, he tries to save R. Usher (or is he ?)
  
• less supernatural elements in TTH than in FHU (unless there is none in FHU)
  
• The text in TTH is more explicit than in FHU
• in TTH the plot / Story is told more directly, straight to the point.
• Is TTH Gothic ?
• FHU is longer than TTH
• No double in TTH
• "The Perverse" in TTH

 Summary

 It's about a person (the narrator) who lives with an old man. He decides to kill him because he's got an "evil eye," a "vulture's eye." So every night, for one week, the narrator stays in front of the old man's bedroom door and spies the old man as he sleeps.

 

 How about Poe's influence on Modern Horror Writing ?

1. Read the texts

2. Try and tell what happens

3. How are the characters built ?

The Metamorphosis, F. Kafka, 1915

1. The main character is Gregor, he has transformed into something else, into a "monstrous vermin" in his bed.

2. He has many legs, he has become a giant insect, and yet everything around him and in him is perfectly banal. It's a third person narrative, where the fantastic element is provided right away.

Kafkaesque means to be blocked in a feedback loop, an administrative nightmare. You can also say, to be in catch 22.

The Thing on the Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft, 1937

1. The narrator says he's shot his friend in the head with six bullets, but also that he didn't kill him, and he wants to prove it.

2. Lovecraft uses the same technique as Poe in TTH : it's a first person narrative, and the narrator uses paradoxes (he shot 6 bullets, but claims he's not the killer.

Lovecraft is highly influential ; he imagined fictional cities (Arkham), fictional books (the Necronomicon) and fictional entities (Cthulhu). He has many epistolary friends, but lived as a recluse and hated mankind.