Comparing Poe And To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Edgar Allen Poe and Harper Lee have vastly different tone and style when writing. While still developing complex themes, Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, is not as dramatic and dark as many of Poe’s stories. In, To Kill a Mockingbird, protagonist, Scout Finch, learns about herself, her family, and the society over a course of three years when her father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man in court during the early 20th century. Edgar Allan Poe, however, writes more twisted stories than Harper Lee. In his story, “The Black Cat”, a kind, loving, passionate animal lover, succumbs to the temptation of alcoholism and murders his wife and favorite pet. While Lee’s and Poe’s styles of writing may be different, many of their works share common …show more content…
The story begins in a prison as the narrator anticipates his execution. Breaking the fourth wall, the character tells the reader that he must confess what he has done, which tells the reader that he has made the wrong choice in his life and turned to evil, “But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul,” (Poe 223). The narrator then flashes back to the beginning of the events that sent him to jail. It is then that he explains that he was a kind man who loved animals, “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition…I was especially fond of animals…” (Poe 223). It was at this time in his life that he was happy and content. He was making all the right choices for him in his life. Then, he started making the wrong choices, the turning point being the narrator’s drinking, “I grew, day by day, more moody…for what a disease is like Alcohol!” (Poe 224). This development in the character leads him to start making bad choices as he turns to evil. The character then goes on to become even more irritable and eventually murders his cat and wife completely turning towards the evil side. But, because he was feeling guilt while in the prison, that shows how he struggled between the evil that was his drinking and his true, kind nature. While both Lee and Poe use the growth of their characters to create their theme, the style in which they develop their characters is vastly different. Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a slower bildungsroman. The characters in the novel are not as harsh with their actions and are mentally stable. In Poe’s stories, his narrators are often unstable and unreliable. They act out with extreme hostility which often ends in another character being murdered. His work is also much shorter than regular novels causing the pace to be much