“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” (Poe). Is a person born insane, or can certain events cause a person to go insane? One inference that could be made is that obsession can drive a person to insanity. Edgar Allan Poe was the writer of the story “The Tell Tale Heart” that is a story about a man with such an obsession over a little eye that he decided to kill. The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is a movie about Jack Torrance becoming the winter caretaker of a hotel with a very large history. Both of these compositions use the characters, the plot and the setting to demonstrate that obsession can cause a person to go completely psychotic.
The characters in both The Tell Tale Heart and The Shining first seem to …show more content…
In The Shining, Jack is obsessed with curing his writers’ block and getting his work done. That is basically why he took the job as the caretaker, to be alone with his family and to have the view give him some ideas. Then one day he became delusional and the obsession and isolation got to him and he attempted to hurt his family. In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator is obsessed with an eye, something very little and almost meaningless unlike how Jack is obsessed with bettering himself in his writing. Also the narrator just snapped one night from seeing the eye and completely murdered the old man:” It was open-wide, wide open and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (Poe304). That differs from The Shining because Jack progressively got worse, he didn’t just become insane in one night. The plots have a similar subject; just the events leading up to everything, and the outcome differ …show more content…
Starting with “The Tell Tale Heart”, the setting is located in an apartment shared between an old man and the narrator. The two men sleep in different rooms and the narrator sneaks into the old mans room every night for many hours. This story takes place in one apartment room rather than one giant hotel like in the movie The Shining. Even when the police interrogate the man about the noises, it still takes place in this one room. Since the two of the men where in such close quarters the narrator had an easier chance to be surrounded with the old mans eye. The narrator had to see the eye every day and the household so after so many times he just went insane and killed him. Rather than taking place in a small apartment, in The Shining, the setting is in a giant hotel shared with just one family. Hence the father became insane from the isolation. There are multiple rooms, a large kitchen, a few dining areas, and even ballrooms that are all shared between one father, one mother and a young son. The mother kept annoying the father who was just trying to work on his obsession, which was curing his writers’ block, until the annoyance got worse and worse and made his obsession increase: “Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get
The characters in both The Tell Tale Heart and The Shining first seem to …show more content…
In The Shining, Jack is obsessed with curing his writers’ block and getting his work done. That is basically why he took the job as the caretaker, to be alone with his family and to have the view give him some ideas. Then one day he became delusional and the obsession and isolation got to him and he attempted to hurt his family. In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator is obsessed with an eye, something very little and almost meaningless unlike how Jack is obsessed with bettering himself in his writing. Also the narrator just snapped one night from seeing the eye and completely murdered the old man:” It was open-wide, wide open and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (Poe304). That differs from The Shining because Jack progressively got worse, he didn’t just become insane in one night. The plots have a similar subject; just the events leading up to everything, and the outcome differ …show more content…
Starting with “The Tell Tale Heart”, the setting is located in an apartment shared between an old man and the narrator. The two men sleep in different rooms and the narrator sneaks into the old mans room every night for many hours. This story takes place in one apartment room rather than one giant hotel like in the movie The Shining. Even when the police interrogate the man about the noises, it still takes place in this one room. Since the two of the men where in such close quarters the narrator had an easier chance to be surrounded with the old mans eye. The narrator had to see the eye every day and the household so after so many times he just went insane and killed him. Rather than taking place in a small apartment, in The Shining, the setting is in a giant hotel shared with just one family. Hence the father became insane from the isolation. There are multiple rooms, a large kitchen, a few dining areas, and even ballrooms that are all shared between one father, one mother and a young son. The mother kept annoying the father who was just trying to work on his obsession, which was curing his writers’ block, until the annoyance got worse and worse and made his obsession increase: “Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get