Comparison Between the Yellow Wallpaper and Tell-Tale Hearts

Jaime Macias Professor Whalen English 1B 22 October 2012 Critical Thinking Log 2 Short Story 2 Madness within the human psyche goes hand and hand when the names Edgar Allen Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman atomic number 18 spoken. The stories The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe and The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are both prime examples of how 19th century authors provoked the ideas of paranoia and mental deterioration within troubled narrators.These disorders can be compared in reference to when each caseful makes its discovery, the similarities can be drawn from discovering these comparisons in mental state, and then differences between The Tell-Tale Heart and The Yellow Wallpaper can be broadcasted. In Tell-Tale Heart, Poes report card through the eyes of an obsessive madman, this is very similar to the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman. Because of the narrators delusional states, it makes it difficult to differentiate between existing events o r from those that occur through the distraught mental state of each narrator.Each character discovers and comes to admittance of their mental disability at different intervals of the stories. The Tell-Tale Heart has craze declared at the very beginning of the story when the narrator proclaims I am mad? The disease had sharpened my sensesnot destroyednot greyed them. (Poe 81). In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman gradually develops the obsession and the disorder in the narrators mental state. The narrator describes the house they have moved into for the summer in the beginning as being, The most beautiful place It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. (Gilman 88). As the narrator examines every move on of the house, she comes to the wallpaper and thats when the obsession begins. I never saw a worse paper in my life. She continues by stating One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every esthetical sin. (Gilman 89) It is here where she describes the wallpaper with detail and begins her descent into mental corrosion. One of the most obvious differences lies in the writing style of Edgar Allen Poe and Gilman, but many of the ideas circle about similar topics.