The Tell-Tale Heart Versus the Necklace

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The Tell-Tale Heart versus The Necklace Two short stories are being discussed in this paper, “The Tell-Tale Heart” written by the famous Edgar Allen Poe, which tells the story of a deluded man trying to convince the readers of his sanity using a rational explanation to explain an irrational behaviour but later proves to the readers how sane he is without still knowing the state of his own mind and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant is about a spoiled ungrateful young woman, Mathilde Loisel, who learns her lesson the hard way. She attends a ball and must have an expensive dress and jewelry as well which she loses and her pride keeps her from telling the truth and puts her into debt. When two things are lined up in this manner, there are inevitably going to be some similarities and differences, however, the differences between these short stories vastly outweigh the similarities. This paper is aimed at contrasting these two stories and pointing out a few of the many differences between the two stories using the each author’s perspective on short stories. One of the primary contrasts in these two short stories is the route in which the reader discovers the ending of the stories. In the necklace, the reader discovers the closure of the story in the conventional configuration, towards the end of the short story. Maupassant believes that “he must construct his work with such skill, it must be so artful under so simple a guise that it is impossible to detect and sketch the plan, or discern the writer’s purpose” (597). However, in The Tell-Tale Heart that starts in medias res, the reader knows the ending at the absolute starting point of the story. Poe’s reasoning is that to get his readers into this preconceived effect, the steps taken to get to that point matters a great deal from the very first sentence. He reports, “if his very initial sentence tend not to the out
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