Blanca Ayala

12-10-12

Period 2

Compare and Contrast Essay

            Do you feel you have what it takes to take someone’s life? In “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl and “Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe are two stories where someone murders a person they live with. Even though these stories are similar their moods are tense, and frightening. While the tone was jumpy and overwhelming.

            In the story “Lame to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl is a story about a woman named Mary Maloney she is with child. Her husband Patric Maloney has bad news to tell his wife. The story shows that Mary is Nervous and very tensed to know what her husband has to tell her. Patric seems upset, he is also very quiet. Mary started to small talk but Patric didn’t answer her back. “Sit down” he said “just for a minute, sit down” it wasn’t till then that she began to get frightened (25). The tone of this quote was very shocking because Mary didn’t expect her husband to ask her to sit down. It was also very scary for Mary because she didn’t know what her husband was going to tell her but she knew that is was something serious. The mood of this quote is very tense because he was not speaking to her and out of nowhere he asks her to sit down. Mary starts to get worried. In all this story show that being in love could make you do crazy things.

            The story I read was “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, what this story is mainly about a man that was madman. He claims  not to be a madman because the man in the story would take care of a elderly man that had voucher eye on for some reason the  eye disturbed him do he felt he should kill the elderly man but the twist is that he likes the old man , he just hates the eye. “Again, listen louder! Louder! Louder! Louder! Villains!(66). I shrieked pretend on more! “. The tone of this quote is very shocking because its shows that the main character is going in same. The mood to this quote is frightening because he screams out loud to confess his murder. It all comes down to show you that even the smartest person could go insane.

            The similarity between “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “The Tell Tale Heart” is that the both have murders. Also after they committed their crime they act like as everything is okay and normal. One of the biggest differences between these two stories is that in “Lame to the Slaughter” the women Mary after she kills her husband Partic, she plans everything out and stays calm until the police show up. The crime scene that she had created. Yet in “Tell Tale Heart” the main characters kills the elderly man but when they come to confess his murder to the police. I feel that these two characters should have not over reacted and walked away from their problems.

            In conclusion, by comparing these two stories tell the reader that both killers have different intensions for killing. Everyone is cable of killing someone its just that they all have different limits.