In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character is plagued by the old man’s eye to the point where he has to kill him.  Eventually this causes him to be shunned by society.  In human society, some people are cast out and cannot be accepted because of their differing views or behaviors from the norm.  The essay “Backwacking: A Plea to the Senator,” by Ralph Ellison, addresses the same topic but with a more realistic approach.  In different ways, both of these pieces of writing say that society determines every aspect of life.  Rather than many different ways of thinking being acceptable in human society, only one way works for the dominant majority.  Each of these authors goes about demonstrating the effects of society in their own way, but in the end they come back to the same conclusion.

            In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe writes the story through the eyes of the narrator, who at the time is mentally unstable.  He keeps seeing the old man’s eye as a demon, almost as if it isn’t part of the old man himself.  He believes that in order to save himself and the old man, he must get rid of the eye once and for all, even if it means killing.  The narrator has become so obsessed with the “evil eye” that he does in fact kill the old man.  He even goes to the lengths of chopping him up into pieces and putting him under the floorboards so that no one will ever know what had happened.  At this point, he believes that he has done the right thing because since he was delusional at the time, he thought that he had helped the old man get rid of a terrible burden.

            In the eyes of the law, what he did is considered murder and according to society it is unacceptable and punishable by jail time or the death penalty.  However, to the narrator, what he did was the right and just thing to do in this particular situation.  Over the years society has established guidelines that, if followed, would ensure that everyone remains unharmed and socially accepted.  If these rules are broken, the person responsible is shunned and sent off to prison until they are fit to be a part of society once more.  It doesn’t matter what the person who broke the rule thinks or what their motivation might have been; if they go against society, they have to pay for it.  In this story, the police represent society with all of its rules.  When they come to the house after the neighbor reports the screaming, they have to investigate the matter for the safety of society.  Even though they don’t find anything of significance, they still represent society checking up on one of its members.

            Just like the police in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the old man writing the letter to the senator in the essay “Backwacking: A Plea to the Senator” is representing part of society in the sense that he is concerned about the behavior of several individuals.  In this essay he is concerned about a new type of sex that some of the black people have been doing where they essentially have sex “doggie-style”.  He believes that this behavior is unnatural for humans and that they should only have frontal sex, like all good humans should.  Due to the time period, (pre Civil Rights), the location of the writer (South), and age of the writer (80), he has an impression of black people that is full of misunderstandings on his part because of the fact that he is most definitely a racist.  He believes that black people are trying to defy the “superior” whites and that is a problem for him because he believes they should be good servants to the whites.

            Even though Ralph Ellison writes this essay using the humorous topic of “Backwacking,” he is using it as an analogy to show that society doesn’t like change.  The writer of the letter represents old society.  Because of the fact that he has lived all of his life with the notion that blacks are inferior to whites, he cannot understand why they are suddenly becoming more and more prevalent and active in society.  When he was younger, blacks were shunned, beaten, and treated like outcasts of society.  That was the norm when he was growing up.  Now, as society is shifting, he finds it not to his liking and wants to revert back to the way things used to be.  Unfortunately for this particular man, it is too late to change the will of the masses.  Blacks are gaining more and more rights as each day passes and he cannot do anything about it but harass a senator about a minor trifle that won’t even gain attention. 

            Much like the man writing the letter to the senator, the man who committed the murder in “The Tell-Tale Heart” will be ignored no matter what reason he gives to justify the old man’s murder.  When he can’t stand it any longer and gives himself up, he is ultimately accepting that he will be ostracized from society for the rest of his life.  It is common knowledge that murderers are sent to jail, which is society’s way of saying, “You don’t belong,” and “we don’t want you.”  Is it right for society to say someone is unfit to live with them just because a man has killed another man?  Should he be condemned for a killing he thought was just and necessary?  This is where the relativity of truth plays an enormous role.  In the eyes of the murderer, he is doing the right thing and he does not understand that society will look upon the act with disdain.  He believes that when he explains why he did the deed they will understand because he is right, and his actions were necessary.  In actuality, the jury will see the killing as an act of brutality that had no cause other than that of insanity.  When the murderer says, “I did it because of his evil eye,” the jury will immediately write him off as a nut case and won’t take a word of what he says seriously.  This is the way society knows how to work and what makes the majority feel secure and comfortable.

            The essay by Ellison explores similar principles, except in a less dramatic and gory way.  Here, the old man is in the same predicament as the murderer, except he isn’t facing jail time for anything.  However, he does believe he is right in his own mind and believes that other people will share the same view point as he does.  He fails to realize that society cannot possibly consider his claims with any sense of seriousness.  The reason for this is that the letter is completely out of realistic bounds and what he is asking is against the law and because society has determined that investigation of individuals’ private lives without undisputed proof of wrong doing is unjust.  If society had not predetermined these guidelines then they might pursue the concerns of the old man.  It all depends on whose point of view it’s coming from.  Society is either with you or against you depending on which side of the rules you are on as Ellison clearly demonstrates in his essay.

            Society determines everything, from the clothes people wear to the very thoughts people have.  Generally people want to fit in with the norm, but there are certain cases where that is just not true and those people are shunned and ostracized from the rest.  What if society was different?  What if there was a different set of guidelines for people to follow?  For example, what if it was sociably acceptable to murder people for personal reasons such as an evil eye that was scary?  Then the murderer would have the sympathy of the people and when the police arrived and learned about the motivation for the murder, all they would do is carry the old man off to the morgue and go on with regular life like nothing ever happened.  The people would agree with the murderer and would still accept him as a part of their culture.  The guidelines for life in human society affect decisions, emotions, and everyday life of all the people who live in it.

            The effect of society is widespread and it ultimately comes down to what the majority of the people agree to be right.  In both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Backwacking: A Plea to the Senator” the murderer and the old gentleman are in the wrong because they appear absurd or crazy by society’s standards.  All it takes to get on the bad side of the masses is to do or say something that does not reinforce the norm.  Once the guidelines are broken or ignored, it is extremely hard to recover from this folly and return to good terms with society.