Tell-Tale Heart Vs Raven

The exceptional writings of Poe will go down in history for their grim style but we can still learn from them today. In The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses first person narration to illustrate their reciprocal themes. Firstly, he utilizes first person narration in The Raven to elucidate its theme that death causes madness. Poe transcribes in stanza 11, “What it utters is its only stock and store.” This refers to the raven and the main character realizing that it can only say one word: nevermore. However, in stanza 16 the narrator asks the bird whether his lost love, Lenore, is in heaven. This shows that the main character is so grief stricken that they ask about their dead loved one even though they know the answer already. The character has become mad as a result of a death. The first person narration in The Raven reinforces its theme of death causing madness. Additionally, first person narration is used in The …show more content…
Throughout The Raven the narrator is mourning the death of his love. This grief eventually leads him to madness but this only builds on the lesson of The Tell-Tale Heart. Both texts teach that terrible things can come from death and insanity. Poe writes in The Tell-Tale Heart about how the innocent life of an old man is taken by a maniac. The author is showing the gruesome repercussions of the main character’s lunacy. The message is ingrained in both stories that insanity and death have grim consequences. The themes in both texts aren’t at odds but rather build on each other. The mirrored themes of The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart are supported by Poe’s employment of first person narration. The Raven’s theme of mournful insanity to The Tell-Tale Heart’s lesson of lunacy’s deadly ramifications Poe skillfully constructs a shared teaching of madness and death. Poe’s great works provide us a valuable warning about the unchecked consequences of insanity and