Literary Analysis Essay on The Tell-Tale Heart and We Can Get Them For You Wholesale

In The Tell-Tale Heart, we meet the narrator, who is the main character in the story and the old man. The story commences with several rhetoric questions as the narrator justifies that indeed he is not a mad man, and instead, his actions required planning. The narrator has a problem with the old man’s eye, as he describes it as “the eye of a vulture.”The rising action of the story is planning to kill the old man, and in that way, get rid of the eye. The story climaxes at the point where he kills the old man, cuts him into pieces carefully, and buries his remains underneath the wooden floor of the old man’s bedroom.

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Thereafter, the falling action begins with the knock of police officers at the door after being called by a concerned neighbor who heard the old man’s cries. The narrator quickly informs them that it was he who cried while dreaming and tells them the old man is out visiting a friend in the country. After a thorough search is conducted, the police stay a while longer, which makes it harder to hide the fact that he was the one who killed the old man. Eventually, he confesses to the killing.

We Can Get Them For You Wholesale introduces the main character as Peter Pinter. He finds out that his fiancé Gwendolyn is having an affair with a man named Archie Gibbons. He then plots to get rid of Archie by hiring operatives to kill him and dispose of the body. His inability to pass a bargain is what formed the plot of this story. His initial payment was 500 pounds to dispose of the body. However, the operative gave him an offer of two for the price of one. He then included Gwendolyn’s name. The more he interacted with the operative, the more offers he got in the name of bulk rate and wholesale rate. More dead bodies for a lesser price. Finally, he asked the price of killing everybody in the world, and the price was zero cost. The operative replied, “We simply have to be asked.”

Both literary works have the theme of murder, but the difference is motive. In Poe’s story, there is the irony behind the murder because the narrator confesses to having no hate for the old man and even says he loved him, and he did not have a reason to kill him. While in Neil’s story, murder was for vengeance, but in the end, the main character is the one that ended up dead.

Poe’s story uses the first person in narrating since the narrator is both the protagonist and the antagonist. The constant use of ‘I’ is seen throughout the story. In Neil’s story, the narrator is the writer and is not part of the plot. The protagonist is Peter, while the antagonists appear to be the operatives he was talking with.

Poe uses rhetoric questions in his work, as this is seen from the beginning of the story. The narrator asks questions such as, “why do you say that I am mad?” and “Can you not see that I have full control of my mind?” On the other hand, Neil uses monologue frequently in his story. This is seen when Peter is alone at home and says, “Aha! There was a physics teacher at school…” as well as when he asks, “who else?’ as he wrote the list of people to be murdered.

Neil’s work is narrated by making use of direct speech for the dialogues that take place, such as in the conversations between Peter and Kemble the operative. In Poe’s work, the speech appears to be reported as there is no use of direct speech.

Poe’s story has a definite ending as the narrator confesses to murdering after interacting with the police. However, Neil’s work ends in suspense as the reader can only guess what happened to Peter. The reader is left pondering on the words of the operative, “They’d been ready for a long time, but they had to be asked.”

References

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The tell-tale heart." (1843). https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/132720/The_Tell-Tale_Heart_(Edgar_Allan_Poe_1843).pdf?sequence=1

Gaiman, Neil. We Can Get Them for You Wholesale. (1989) https://mrdylitcirclestories.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/we-can-get-them-for-you-wholesale.pdf