One may have heard the simple saying that “Love can make you do crazy things.” Many adults can confirm that the saying proves true; one could even spend a few hours watching CSI type of shows that portray the stories of two love-struck people becoming cold-hearted killers just to be with their significant other. Why would they be so desperate to be together that they would kill anyone who got in between them? Desperation so serve that they would even kill a loved one? It could be that as children they were deprived of love and nourishment that children normally receive. This deprivation of love led them to cling to anyone that made them think they were being love. In A Rose for Emily and Tell-Tale Heart a character murders someone who they love. The two works, share similarities and differences when it comes to the characters, the narratives point of view and reason for killing a loved one.
Miss Emily, in A Rose for Emily and the main character of Tell-Tale Heart, who will be referred to as The Narrator, both of the characters murder a loved one. Miss Emily killed her lover, Homer Barron, with arsenic that she purchased from her local druggist. Faulkner wrote that by law they were to state their intended use of the poison, Miss Emily never did. “‘If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.’ Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.” (161). The Narrator was much more physical when it came to killing the old man. Poe writes “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him.” (404). The Narrator keeps the bed over the old man until he could no longer hear a heart beat. Faulkner comments “Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.” (160). Homer Barron had came to Miss Emily’s hometown for construction purposes, they would often be seen together but no one could ever confirm they were in a committed relationship or not. It was not until Barron’s body was found lying in an embrace upstairs in Miss Emily’s house, that readers could piece together status of their relationship. Faulkner states “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love. . .had cuckolded him. ” (164). Poe never says if the old man was related to The Narrator. In fact the only reason readers know that The Narrator does indeed love the old man is when he states it. “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.” (Poe 403).
The points of view for the stories are somewhat similar; both of them were written in first-person. However A Rose for Emily was written in first person plural while Tell-Tale Heart was written in first-person singular. Although it is quite uncommon for literature to be written in first-person plural, it was...
