Insanity and human death, murder in particular, are both a good bases for creating suspense. On one hand, there is murder, the taking of another’s life which is the capital crime and the greatest loss a human being can suffer. On the other hand, there is insanity, the unpredictability of a person’s actions while being possessed. When combined together, these two radical elements are a potent and sure way to get the reader’s heart pumping faster, as we are all afraid to leave life, the most important gift, in the hands of a madman. A story about trivial matters would not be as significant as one dealing with life and death. Two stories that are written using these subjects for the means of creating suspense are Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. These two stories, although different in structure, language use, plot lines and other literary elements, are alike in their successful attempt to create suspense by means of combining a life and death related situation with the frightening fact that the control over the occurrences is not managed sensibly.

Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Tell-Tale Heart portrays a person driven to kill a harmless old man by his own madness. The theme of this work deals with the unjustified homicide of an innocent character, the old man, for no reason other than a facial feature the old man has, which is disagreeable with the killer’s madness.

In Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, an age-old tradition leads the people of a small village to stone a woman to death so that the crops that year would be fruitful. The theme of Jackson’s story is the periodical social sacrifice of humans for the well being of the majority. Both stories deal with an insane act, which leads to an otherwise avoidable murder. The insanity in Poe’s story is implied in the words and reasons of the killer “But why will you say that I am mad?…It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night”(Poe 88). All through the story, the narrator denies the fact that he is mad; This alone implies that he is. The fact that the reason for the murder is unjustified raises the suspicion that the narrator is mad. The way that the thought of murder came into the narrator’s mind and was not rejected proves that the narrator is insane. Insanity is not at all mentioned In The Lottery. Naturally, the killing of the innocent is not considered by me to be a sane act. In fact, insanity in The Lottery is disguised as tradition. The villagers think that the stoning will bring good luck and prosperity so they agree to sacrifice the life of one human each year for the good of the many. ”The lottery was conducted – as were the square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program…no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box…The chips of wood that had been used for generations.”(Jackson 628-629)

In both stories, there are killers and a victim. In Poe’s story, the killer is the narrator himself. He does not say much about himself, even his name is not mentioned, but much can be deduced due to his thoughts and deeds. The killer in Jackson’s story is the whole village community. A few of the people from the village are described briefly, only for the reader to understand the structure of the village and not to get to know each and every one of them. The victim is Mrs. Tessa Hutchinson. Her appearance is not described and she comes into the plot half way into the story. She differs from the rest of the people, as she almost does not arrive in time for the lottery at all. She forgets about it as if she is not interested in it, or she does not totally accept its existence. We know of her refusal to have her family chosen by the lottery, especially herself, whereas in Poe’s victim we do not know his thoughts except for what is assumed by the narrator. We do not know his name, and beside from his eye condition, he is hardly described at all. The three policemen are not described at all as well. They could have been described as tough looking officials, to add to the killers fear and anxiety, but as he is confidant in his success to hide the body, he hardly says a word about them. In Jackson’s story, the outsiders are the north villagers. The outsiders in both stories are hardly described. They simply aid the author in showing the insanity of the killers by contrasting them opposite a sane alternative.

The madness of the narrator in Poe’s story makes him decide to kill the old man with no hesitations whatsoever. ”It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” (Poe 88) The decision to tell the policemen what he had done was as impulsive as the idea to commit the murder. He had no conflict, proving again the irrational thought that led him to act in the story’s plot. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment which is about a young man who is conflicted about whether or not to confess the murder he has committed, as any sane person would be. In The Lottery, there is conflict between Tessa and the other characters who are about to execute her. Tessa does not object to the killing, as long as her family and herself are not at immediate risk. Once chosen, she objects to the stoning, claiming that the lottery was not fair. Even under the risk of death, her argument is not that the whole thing is wrong, but just that the choice is not justified. The villagers are not at all conflicted among themselves in stoning the woman, because of insanity which is called in this case tradition. The conflict between Tessa and the villagers is still within the bounders of madness. Tessa, although about to be stoned, does not protest against the lottery. In both stories, conflict is not a major factor. It is diminished by the killers’ insanity.

Jackson describes the plot and setting in The Lottery in a way that is assuring the reader. Nothing is mentioned at the beginning about death or insanity. The setting of the center of a village in broad daylight is a normal one. The weather is of mid summer and does not give any clues to what is about to happen. ”The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank” (Jackson 626). The words “post office” and “bank” are everyday normal words of a sane and organized world, and do not go well with a stoning scene.

In Poe’s story, the truth is out almost at once. The killing takes place at midnight, a good time by all accounts to commit a murder. The setting is an old house and the language is formal. Sentences in the story sound like whispering or tiny movements because of the repetition of certain words. “I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out…I moved it slowly- very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep” (Poe 89). All of these elements in Poe’s story are completely opposite to the ones in Jackson’s story. The reason for that is the creating of suspense by the author; this point will be discussed later on.

In Poe’s story, the old man has an eye condition that looks like a vulture’s eye, that the narrator finds frightening. This condition is not a rare one. Many people have it, but are seldom killed for it. The old man’s eye is a materialization of the narrator’s feeling of persecution, of his mad interpretation of all that is bad.” I loved the old man. He had never wronged me he had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this.” (Poe 88) The narrator does not want to kill the old man. He wants to kill the eye. The problem is, of course, not in the eye of the old man but in the narrator’s mind, as is the case in the apparent heart beat of the dead body when it is actually the narrator’s own heart that was making the noise. Killing the old man was not enough to stop his madness, its existence is inside the narrator’s mind. Such symbols exist in Jackson’s work as well. The black box that is used for the lottery is old. “The black box grew shabbier each year, by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color.” (Jackson 629) The black box is actually the lottery tradition. It is old and it is no longer completely in shape. As told by Mr. Adams, “…Over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery”(Jackson 631). The fact that so much of the ritual has been forgotten or changed besides the actual stoning and the black box shows that they are both similar. They both outlived the changes of time. “Part of this ritual had been allowed to lapse…no one liked to upset even as much tradition as represented by the black box” (Jackson 628-629). Both the black box and the heart beat from the stories are symbols for insanity. They are both unchanging and undying factors in the killers’ mind.

Suspense is used in both stories with different timing. In The Lottery one does not understand what is about to happen until the actual stoning. The author delays this knowledge to keep the reader in suspense until the right moment. The author excels in doing so by the use of setting and language that confuses the reader and diverts him from the truth. In The Tell-Tale Heart suspense is created and raised to a higher level in two events. The first is on the eighth night when the narrator is inside the old man’s room. Although the killer its confident in his triumph, the reader is still worried about what will happen. “Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers- of my sagacity. I could not contain my feelings of triumph.” (Poe 89) The second time that suspense is raised is when the police arrive, and as they sit in the old man’s room, the narrator’s heart starts to drive him mad. “ No doubt I now grow very pale… yet the sound increased…I gasped for breath… oh God, what could I do?” (Poe 92) In this part of the story, the reader asks himself what will become of the narrator? Will the truth come out? Suspense is finally resolved when the narrator admits to the crime. The reader knows all along what the true intentions of the narrator are, but does not know what the outcome of the story will be; Whereas in Jackson’s story, the reader is unaware of what is happening. That is the reason for the differences in writing technique mentioned above.

Both of the stories discussed here deal with a murder caused by insanity. Insanity, as I explained before, can be a very frightening thing; None-the less, what is most scary about madness is that sometimes it sounds all too rational. I am not saying that the deeds portrayed in these stories are OK. It is just that one’s deepest fear is not that madness is around him, but that it is inside him. One fears that some day he will wake up and discover that what the madmen are saying sounds logical. Then insanity begins to take control.