Murder is a vindictive crime that has been known to happen all over the world. Although, it's an unforgiving crime society engages in the details of the manner it occurred and the thought of the reason that drove a person to commit such a crime. In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe created The Tell-Tale Heart that described a narrator sharing how he murdered his victim while trying to convince the reader of his rationality. Similarly, Roald Dahl also created the short story Lamb to the Slaughter regarding a house wife murdering her husband by virtue of him wanting to leave her. In the two short stories its evident the characters committed the same crime of murdering, however, it's conspicuous the murders had different motives and outcomes. In the Tell-Tale
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For one thing, after the murderer in Tale-Tell Heart short story had killed his victim he had the idea to cut the old man's corpse up and hide the pieces under wooden floors. After doing so, the murderer had placed the wooden floors to their natural state to the point no trace of blood or stains that a human could notice would be visible and finished the job at four in the morning. This made the murder figure no one would discover his crime however; the neighbors had complained of an unusual noise which lead to the policemen arriving at his house. In the beginning he had composed himself as if it had never occurred but the sound of the old man's beating heart was slowly making its way to his hearing. In his situation, It was as if the beating heart was the guilt that the murder was starting to feel for killing an innocent man that had never done him wrong. Considering, "Guilt is tied to beliefs about what is right and wrong, moral, and immoral. When we violate one of these moral guidelines, it causes us to feel guilty over our actions and seek to fix what we have done." (Barker) The guilt the murder felt from hearing the old man's heartbeat had governed the murder's senses which lead him to confessing the crime. In contrast to the outcome of Lamb to Slaughter, Mary never admitted to her crime. After Mary had killed her husband she knew the penalty she was to face if she confessed however, Mary was pregnant at the moment. It became aware Mary would've willingly accepted the punishment but the thought of the things her child would have to go through without a mother made her afraid of revealing her crime. Mary was risking her whole life away for her unborn child, "Perhaps it is more a phenomenon of shared energy. Perhaps it is quite simply the urgent desire to protect and shield that allows a mother to bridge the gap between time and distance and feel the
For one thing, after the murderer in Tale-Tell Heart short story had killed his victim he had the idea to cut the old man's corpse up and hide the pieces under wooden floors. After doing so, the murderer had placed the wooden floors to their natural state to the point no trace of blood or stains that a human could notice would be visible and finished the job at four in the morning. This made the murder figure no one would discover his crime however; the neighbors had complained of an unusual noise which lead to the policemen arriving at his house. In the beginning he had composed himself as if it had never occurred but the sound of the old man's beating heart was slowly making its way to his hearing. In his situation, It was as if the beating heart was the guilt that the murder was starting to feel for killing an innocent man that had never done him wrong. Considering, "Guilt is tied to beliefs about what is right and wrong, moral, and immoral. When we violate one of these moral guidelines, it causes us to feel guilty over our actions and seek to fix what we have done." (Barker) The guilt the murder felt from hearing the old man's heartbeat had governed the murder's senses which lead him to confessing the crime. In contrast to the outcome of Lamb to Slaughter, Mary never admitted to her crime. After Mary had killed her husband she knew the penalty she was to face if she confessed however, Mary was pregnant at the moment. It became aware Mary would've willingly accepted the punishment but the thought of the things her child would have to go through without a mother made her afraid of revealing her crime. Mary was risking her whole life away for her unborn child, "Perhaps it is more a phenomenon of shared energy. Perhaps it is quite simply the urgent desire to protect and shield that allows a mother to bridge the gap between time and distance and feel the