Compare and Contrast Essay: The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado

The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado are both beautifully, horrific stories, but despite that, they both have lots of differences and similarities. The Tell-Tale Heart involves a painless death for the main character. But they’re similar by ending up with the same inevitable fate, death.

In the Tell-Tale Heart, the old man dies in a rather painless, quick way by the narrator. But the objective of his death was quite similar. The narrator didn’t necessarily want to kill the old man, but his eye. The narrator visited the old man for that exact purpose, for 7 nights, just to get the right opportunity. It was inevitable that the narrator would see the eye eventually, but the fear and anger caused the narrator to act recklessly, killing the old man immediately. 

In The Cask of Amontillado, Fortunato meets his end in a painful, slow way by the narrator, Montressor. Montressor took time and planned everything out, for the sake of revenge. He, himself, said in the story “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” Of course, this revenge wasn’t for no reason; Fortunato disrespected Montressor more than once according to Fortunato. Montressor urged Fortunato to turn back and acts friendly with intentions of the complete opposite. He took his time building the wall as he listened to Montressor plead. The purpose of this wasn’t because he exhausted but rather because Montressor simply enjoyed Fortunatos cries.

These two stories, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Cask of Amontillado both play out the deaths of their victims very well. Sure the cause of deaths are different, but the way they made sure no one would find the bodies of the victims was beyond on the spot planning. In The Cask of Amontillado, Montressor made sure all his servants were away, leading Fortunato well gone into his cellar. Also, he fed Fortunato alcohol and did nothing except act kindly to Montressor. As for The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator makes sure to cut off each of the old mans body parts, including the head, arms, chest, and legs. The narrator then proceeds to dispose of them under the floor boards.

Short horror stories with the fate of death are very common these days, as Halloween is right around the corner. These two stories portray the death of each victim extremely vividly, not only that, but involves a lot of foreshadowing. The foreshadowing eventually leads up to the murder, where speed plays a major role in objective and emotion. The satisfaction Montressor received as he slowly killed Fortunato was nothing like the instant suffocation of the old man. Either way, these stories are beautifully written and shall stay in the horrific history of short horror stories.