Jack Mitchell
Mr. Glen Smith
English1302
Oct 10,2012 Compare/Contrast Essay
Assignment #2

The unnamed narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Tell- Tale Heart” and the chambermaid in the Grimm Brothers “The Goose Girl” both possess strikingly similar characteristics. Both show aggression and use violence to get what they want but are very careful of how they go about it and covering it up. In Poe’s story, the unnamed narrator kills an elderly man that he is caring for because the old man has a foul looking eye that is covered with a white film. This is what is slowly driving him insane but afterwards he ingeniously decides to hide the body incase someone heard the noise of the olds man body. This is so he does not get arrested for his …show more content…

“Send for the knacker, and have the head of the horse which I rode here cut off.” (408) This is her way of making sure that there are no loose ends and that there is no one or thing that can revel her true identity. However, she does not know the horse can still talk after its’ been beheaded. This small overlooked detail is the root cause to her downfall. The Narrator is portrayed as an insane man who starts to lose control of whatever sanity he has left once he comes into contact with the elderly mans grotesque eye that he thinks is evil. Even though he is portrayed as crazy, in reality he has not lost his mind completely, in he fact that he actually watches the man, investigates the room, and checks the eye to see if it is open “every night just at midnight”(303). He did this for seven nights, which clearly shows that he has not completely lost his grip on reality. By waiting for the perfect chance to strike shows patience, mentally and physically. Another sign the narrator was not totally insane was that he had a face-to-face conversation with three police officers. In the end, “The officers were satisfied” and believed his alibi. There is no way a person said to have lost his mind completely could have fooled three trained police officers. On the other hand, the chambermaid in “The Goose Girl” is seen as a cunning, tough character throughout the story. However, towards the end of the story her true colors begin to