February 22,2016
Compare and Contrast 

            In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Gilman is delivering her story through a mentally ill woman, in similarity to Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Tell Tale Heart." They are both using this technique to create insecurity to the readers which is a good twist in a short story. This type of twist makes the readers perplexed since they can't really trust the narrator completely. One difference between those two stories is that in "Tell Tale Heart" it is clear from the beginning that the protagonist has some mental problems, which it is a almost impossible to tell that the main character, suffer from mental diseases in "The Yellow Wallpaper." This has a greatly effect on both of the story since Perkins Gilman's story is harder to interpret in the beginning, which of course makes the whole story interesting. Especially to experience the protagonists turn from being an ordinary woman who appear to be normal, to be a total freak, as you can see in the end of the story when she she is crawling on the floor. The fact that we already from the beginning knows that the man in "Tell Tale Heart" suffer from a mental disease tells us that something cruel is to be expected. One other interesting thing in Poe's story is that he uses an excellent way of telling the story through a madman's perspective. It is almost as if the man is having a conversation with the reader, and as he is telling the story right then directly to the reader. That makes the readers feel involved in the story. In the very first sentence, the madman is actually asking a question to the readers, "...But why WILL you say that I am mad?" Charlotte, on the other hand, has written the story as in a diary, which means that we just know what the protagonist wants us to know. She can therefore easily leave out important facts and happening that happens somewhere between her diary entries. As a result of the diary structure of the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" encloses more detailed descriptions than "Tell Tale Heart" does, which is more focusing on the mans obsession.