Compare and Contrast

Introduction

Poe uses exposition almost as far as possible in this story. The man tells of every little detail in how he carefully rid of the old man. Every night for a week, he takes an hour just to open the door enough to see inside the room. Then on the last night, he does the same and takes just enough of the lantern covering away, so that only a sliver of light shows on the eye itself. After he kills the old man by suffocating him, he spills no blood by getting all of it into the tub. Then he chops up the body and puts it under the floorboards where no one can tell that the boards were taken up. All these details puts a person right into the story and help that person imagine what is taking place. Although the modern pairing of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster is primarily a function of their partnership on the silver screen, our favourite monsters have enjoyed a long and fascinating relationship (Sharp p.23). Their origins can be traced to the famous literary gathering on the shores of Lake Geneva. The story is well known. In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and his doctor, John Polidori, were residing at the Villa Diodati where they were visited by Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin (who would soon become Mary Shelley) and Claire Claremont. One evening, after a collective reading of ghost stories, Byron suggested that each member of the party write a story of their own. The debate concerning the relationship between literature and film is as old as the cinematic medium itself. Considered a low-level form of mass entertainment, early film sought to increase its cultural reputation by drawing from the already established arts such as music, theatre, and literature. Hence, cinematic adaptations of literary works or motifs became increasingly common, particularly after the bourgeoning film industry shifted its focus from documentation to narration, that is, after the end of what Noel Burch considers the primitive mode of representation before 1909, as opposed to the institutional mode of representation and its spectator-oriented approach thereafter (Cobleigh p.45)

Body

The Tell-Tale Heart was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843 and is considered one of the finest stories of psychological horror. A man becomes obsessed with a vulture-like eye and tells very descriptively of his methods in how he got rid of the man. In the end, his madness drives him into confession. The plot has three main literary elements that contribute to the atmosphere of the story. These characteristics are detailed exposition, interest in the inner mind, and suspense. The Black Cat is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most memorable stories. The tale centers around a black cat and the subsequent deterioration of a man. The story is often linked with The Tell-Tale Heart because of the profound psychological elements these two works share. The Black Cat first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on August 19, 1843 (Shelley p.35). This first-person narrative falls into ...