Theme Of Obsession In Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart
Obsession can control someone’s entire life. If people are unable to handle their fascination it can alter their reality. Obsession leads people to extreme acts. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” shows how a man becomes controlled by his roommate’s eye so much so that he commits murder so he does not have to see the clouded eye every day. Correspondingly, Dennis Villeneuve’s Prisoners is about a father who is so determined to find his daughter that he goes to extreme measures. Both stories depict the concept that obsession can control and leads to severe deeds in the plots, the conflicts and symbols. The plots of both the stories can be compared in the way that they have an obsession that controls the main characters life. In Poe’s story
…show more content…
“The Tell-Tale Heart” shows this when the man thinks he hears a beating heart. There is no possible way for this to happen considering the way the he murdered the old man, but the narrator was so paranoid that he thought he heard a constant beating. Which caused him to say “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!¬–tear up the planks!–here, here!–it is the beating of his hideous heart” (Poe 306)! The pounding of a heart can symbolize the aching to come clean and confess what he was once obsessed over. A whistle in Prisoners is what the movie basically revolves around. The elementary-schooled age daughter before she went missing asked to find her whistle at her house she told the parents “The emergency whistle Daddy gave me. I lost it…” (Villeneuve). When the daughter left to retrieve the whistle she was then abducted. By not having the whistle she had no way of calling for people to rescue her. The whistle can represent the sense of safety. In the very end when the fathers obsession got him in a troubled situation, in a cellar of the women’s house that kidnapped his daughter, he finds the whistle his daughter has been missing and blows it. People can infer that the detective hears the whistle and finds Keller but the movie cuts out before anything happens. Concluding
“The Tell-Tale Heart” shows this when the man thinks he hears a beating heart. There is no possible way for this to happen considering the way the he murdered the old man, but the narrator was so paranoid that he thought he heard a constant beating. Which caused him to say “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!¬–tear up the planks!–here, here!–it is the beating of his hideous heart” (Poe 306)! The pounding of a heart can symbolize the aching to come clean and confess what he was once obsessed over. A whistle in Prisoners is what the movie basically revolves around. The elementary-schooled age daughter before she went missing asked to find her whistle at her house she told the parents “The emergency whistle Daddy gave me. I lost it…” (Villeneuve). When the daughter left to retrieve the whistle she was then abducted. By not having the whistle she had no way of calling for people to rescue her. The whistle can represent the sense of safety. In the very end when the fathers obsession got him in a troubled situation, in a cellar of the women’s house that kidnapped his daughter, he finds the whistle his daughter has been missing and blows it. People can infer that the detective hears the whistle and finds Keller but the movie cuts out before anything happens. Concluding