The Yellow Wallpaper And The Tell Tale Heart Comparison Essay

Fear, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, etc. are the common character traits of the 2 characters within the short stories, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Yellow Wallpaper. Although the narrators of the 2 stories have contrasting fates, they have many similarities, from how they behave to the way they think. This text aims to match and contrast both characters of the 2 stories, but I would like to focus more on the similarities . 

The most obvious difference is the tone of both stories. The 2 stories have two completely different tones in “The Tell-Tale Heart'' there's a more morbid and narcissistic tone. For instance, the character states “Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this?” .This concept shows a more self-absorbed side of the character he tries hard to prove he's no mad man. He wants to prove that he's better, which he thinks his disease has made him even better. This concept is even more obvious when he says this “while I personally, within the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my very own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.” This response is the perfect example of how he believes that he's untouchable and better than everyone else, he thinks he's above the law. It also shows a morbid side to him when he purposely puts his chair above the corpse of the old man. On the other hand,  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is complicated because she changes throughout the story as her condition gets worse, but the most apparent tones are depression and loneliness. Throughout the story, she is basically lonely and just wants to be around people. She basically says that she wants to visit her cousin Henry and Julia but her husband denies her the opportunity and she starts to cry.  This shows how she yearned for affection but her husband thought the best thing for her was to be isolated. It shows how depressed she is that she attempted to urge help but whenever she tries her husband doesn't do anything. It also proves that she was lonely when she cried because she wanted to go to her cousin Henry and Julia. 

The most important similarity is that they both have a skewed sense of reality. For instance, each of them showed signs of insanity; the character from “The Tell-Tale Heart” has auditory hallucinations. He believed that the police could hear the heartbeat of the old man, in fact, he stated “Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror.”. This response proves how he has lost his mind. He was afraid that they might hear the heartbeat of a dead man. He's having a mental breakdown because he believes the officers can hear the heartbeat and  states “It is the beating of his hideous heart!” .  During the entire tale, his behavior shows that he's not “normal” ; he even acknowledges that he has a disease. At the top, you'll see how he reaches his verge of collapse, further revealing that he's not mentally sane. The character from “The Yellow Wallpaper” slowly lost her mind due to the wallpaper. She had signs of insanity from her nervousness to her unreasonable anger with John. To prove my point that she has lost her mind, I will focus more on the second half of the story. During the second part, she begins to hallucinate a figure trying to flee from the wallpaper, she is so convinced that she gets up to see and  states  “The faint figure behind appeared to shake the pattern, even as if she wanted to urge out.”  “I got up softly and visited feel and see if the paper did move, and once I came back John was awake”.When she finally got up to feel the paper, it shows that she finally gave in to her disease because before she just thought that it had been her mind playing tricks now, she believes it's real. This was only the start of her mental decline; she would slowly go insane. She begins to tear the wallpaper because she wants to prevent the creeping woman within the wallpaper, and she  starts to creep round her room and states  “I’ve got a rope here that even Jennie didn't find. If that woman does get out, and tries to urge away, I can tie her!” and “I suppose I shall need to revisit the pattern when it comes at night, which is hard! it's so pleasant to be called to this great room and creep around as I please!”. This really shows how she can't tell what's real and what's not real, showing that she has a mental disease because she is waiting to capture a woman that doesn't exist. When she is creeping around her room , it also shows that she is insane.  

Another thing that they need in common may be a catalyst that causes them to lose their sanity. For instance, the narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart” goes insane and kills the old man due to his eye “I think it had been his eye! Yes, it had been this! He had the attention of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a movie over it … I made up my mind to require the lifetime of the old man, and thus rid myself of the attention forever” The old man's eye was the reason why he decided to kill  him; it had been the “spark that lit the fuse.`` The reason the eye made him want to kill was because it terrified him and he couldn't handle it.  The catalyst For the main character  in “The Yellow Wallpaper” insanity is that the way the  wallpaper looked and smelled and the fact that she was locked within the room all day caused her to lose her mind. She begins to see a woman in the wallpaper that is slowly creeping down trying to find a way out. The yellow paper caused her to lose her mind. It had been the reason she began to see the lady from the window and saw them trying to flee the wallpaper. It had been all due to the yellow wallpaper

In conclusion, this text message aims to compare and contrast the two characters in the story, by comparing their tone of voice, mental illness, and the main reasons for their madness. I used the evidence in the text to support each of my views. Both stories have different sorts of writing and alternative ways of portraying mental disease, but they both show that it greatly affects you, and therefore the two stories both show mental disease from a special perspective showing that mental disease isn't the same for everybody.