Edgar Allen Poe\'s 1843 Short Story \"The

Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is about a young man who becomes mortally obsessed with an old man's creepy eye and ultimately kills him. Thomas Hardy's 1902 poem "The Man He Killed" is about a soldier who has become used to killing people just because they are on the other side of the war. Both of these narratives lend insight into guilt related to death, told by a person who is self-aware enough to tell the story in a first person narrative. Moreover, both of these stories have a similarly suspenseful tone that accompanies imagery of death and murder. Although one is a short story and the other a poem, Poe and Hardy also rely on a similar plot structure in which the narrator relates how and why he killed another man rather arbitrarily. In spite of these core similarities, there are also strong differences between "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Man He Killed." In spite of these differences, both Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Hardy's "The Man He Killed" use point-of-view, tone, and plot to discuss attitudes toward death and guilt.

A first-person narrator provides an intimate point-of-view that helps convey attitudes toward death and guilt. Both Poe and Hardy rely on their narrators to convey concepts related to death and killing. Told in the first person, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is more about the narrator than about the victim of the murder. In "The Man He Killed," the first person narration likely takes the reader's attention away from the victim and places it on the killer. Although the narrator in "The Man He Killed" was a soldier, his being a soldier does not necessarily make his killing morally justified. The narrator is telling his story because he feels, on some level, a sense of guilt. He muses about what would have happened if he and the other man had "met / By some old ancient inn," rather than on the battlefield. The first person narration allows Hardy to develop the character's sense of guilt related to having killed other people, even when that killing is socially sanctioned during wartime. The narrator in Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is not socially sanctioned to kill. His guilt is also poignant, because the narrative is told from a first-person perspective. The narrator begins with a few statements that reveal his guilt and paranoia. He states that he is "nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" From this point-of-view, the narrator prepares the reader to get inside the head of a madman as he kills someone and then tries to cover it up. The progression of the narrative is different from that of "The Man He Killed," but the first person narrative achieves the same goals in both of these works of literature by conveying attitudes toward death and guilt.

The tone of the stories is another literary tool that conveys attitudes toward death and guilt in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Hardy's "The Man He Killed." In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the tone is outright suspenseful. From the very first line, which is phrased in the form of a question, the reader wonders what the crazy narrator will do. The narrator draws in the reader by describing in his perspective, the brutal murder of the old man. Using a suspenseful tone allows Poe to keep the reader's attention, even as the murder takes place early in the story. "But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour!" The rest of the story is about how the narrator tries to cover up his evil deed, and eventually gets caught by the police. In "The Man He Killed," it is a solder who kills. Therefore, there is no police action or legal consequences to the murder that is described in the poem. At the same time, the poem has a suspenseful tone that encourages the reader to ponder the serious nature of war and death. Starting the poem with the phrase, "Had he and I but met…" the narrator sets up the reader for feeling the guilt and shame that he feels on killing a man who was probably no different than he was. As with Poe's short story, the murder happens about halfway through the narrative in "The Man He Killed." This allows for a certain degree of suspense to build before the murder, as well as afterwards because the reader is curious about the point the narrator is trying to make by expressing his guilt.

In addition to the point-of-view and tone, plot is another literary element that helps reveal guilt and attitudes toward death. The plot of "The Tell-Tale Heart" begins with the narrator describing the buildup to his dirty deed. "It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night," the narrator states. Poe wants the reader to get inside the mind of the narrator, and the story is more about the narrator's psychology than it is about the murder itself. After the narrator describes the build-up to the crime, he kills the old man rather rapidly, by entering his room at night and dragging a bed on top of him. "He shrieked once --once only. 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." This shows how the narrator accomplished the deed, as he has already explained why he did it. After the murder, the narrator goes about hiding the body. Herein lies the crux of "The Tell-Tale Heart," which is about the persistence of guilt after the murder has been created. Plot is an especially effective method of conveying guilt related to murder. In Hardy's poem "The Man He Killed," plot is also an effective method of portraying a man's guilt related to murder. Although a soldier's killing cannot be considered murder, the poem is nevertheless structured as a narrative plot that includes a murder and its effects on the killer. Unlike "The Tell-Tale Heart," the killing has already taken place. The narrator of "The Man He Killed" reflects on the act of killing random people on the battlefield. He states that if he had met this individual under normal circumstances, the narrator would probably have gotten along well with him as they probably shared many things in common. Yet "I shot him dead because -- / Because he was my foe," (Hardy). It was "clear enough" that he was the foe because of their respective uniforms, but the fact remains that the narrator is telling a story because he feels guilty. Therefore, plot is a particularly effective means of developing ideas related to guilt and death.