Insanity and human death, murder in particular, are both a good bases for creating suspense. On one hand, there is murder, the taking of another’s life which is the capital crime and the greatest loss a human being can suffer. On the other hand, there is insanity, the unpredictability of a person’s actions while being possessed. When combined together, these two radical elements are a potent and sure way to get the reader’s heart pumping faster, as we are all afraid to leave life, the most important gift, in the hands of a madman. A story about trivial matters would not be as significant as one dealing with life and death. Two stories that are written using these subjects for the means of creating suspense are Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. These two stories, although different in structure, language use, plot lines and other literary elements, are alike in their successful attempt to create suspense by means of combining a life and death related situation with the frightening fact that the control over the occurrences is not managed sensibly.
Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Tell-Tale Heart portrays a person driven to kill a harmless old man by his own madness. The theme of this work deals with the unjustified homicide of an innocent character, the old man, for no reason other than a facial feature the old man has, which is disagreeable with the killer’s madness.
In Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, an age-old tradition leads the people of a small village to stone a woman to death so that the crops that year would be fruitful. The theme of Jackson’s story is the periodical social sacrifice of humans for the well being of the majority. Both stories deal with an insane act, which leads to an otherwise avoidable murder. The insanity in Poe’s story is implied in the words and reasons of the killer “But why will you say that I am mad?…It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night”(Poe 88). All through the story, the narrator denies the fact that he is mad; This alone implies that he is. The fact that the reason for the murder is unjustified raises the suspicion that the narrator is mad. The way that the thought of murder came into the narrator’s mind and was not rejected proves that the narrator is insane. Insanity is not at all mentioned In The Lottery. Naturally, the killing of the innocent is not considered by me to be a sane act. In fact, insanity in The Lottery is disguised as tradition. The villagers think that the stoning will bring good luck and prosperity so they agree to sacrifice the life of one human each year for the good of the many. ”The lottery was conducted – as were the square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program…no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box…The chips of wood that had been used for generations.”(Jackson 628-629)
In both stories, there are killers and a victim. In Poe’s story, the killer is the narrator himself. He does not say much about himself, even his name is not mentioned, but much can be deduced due to his thoughts and deeds. The killer in Jackson’s story is the whole village community. A few of the people from the village are described briefly, only for the reader to understand the structure of the village and not to get to know each and every one of them. The victim is Mrs. Tessa Hutchinson. Her appearance is not described and she comes into the plot half way into the story. She differs from the rest of the people, as she almost does not arrive in time for the lottery at all. She forgets about it as if she is not interested in it, or she does not totally accept its existence. We know of her refusal to have her family chosen by the lottery, especially herself, whereas in Poe’s victim we do not know his thoughts except for what is assumed by the narrator. We do not know his name, and beside from his eye condition, he is hardly described at all. The three policemen are not described at all as well. They could have been described as tough looking officials, to add to the killers fear and anxiety, but as he is confidant in his success to hide the body, he hardly says a word about them. In Jackson’s story, the outsiders are the north villagers. The outsiders in both stories are hardly described. They simply aid the author in showing the insanity of the killers by contrasting them opposite a sane alternative.
And what about Edgar Allan Poe, killing Mary Cecila Rodgers aka Marie Rogêt, and writing a famous detective story about it? (Check out my article on the subject!)
