"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
The narrator tells the story of living with a man who had never harmed him, but who had
a "cloudy blue eye" that drove the narrator insane—though he insists as he tells the
story that he is not insane.
As time
passes, the narrator decides that he must kill the old man, but only when his "evil eye"
is open. So the narrator sneaks into the old man's bedroom one night, and when the man
wakes in terror, the narrator kills him and buries his body beneath the floor boards.
The problem the narrator now has is that he can still hear the man's beating heart. It
makes him so crazed, that when the police come to investigate the old man's scream, the
narrator eventually admits to the deed because he can no longer stand to listen to the
beating of the heart...which obviously only exists in his
mind.
In the film Psycho, directed by
Alfred Hitchcock (an iconic American horror classic), the main character, Norman Bates
runs a motel with his mother. When a guest, Marion Crane—a fugitive from the law, having
stolen a lot of money—stays over one night, Norman becomes drawn to
her.
The most famous scene in the movie is the shower scene
where an unknown female assailant stabs Marion to death. When Norman finds out what has
happened, he hides all evidence that Marion was ever
there.
An investigator for the police, Arbogast, comes to
the house to find the missing woman, and he is also stabbed by the unknown female.
However, when he does not return, Marion's sister Lila and Marion's boyfriend Sam, who
have been working with Arbogast, go to the police. They report having seen Norman's
mother in the window, but the police say this is impossible as she had, years before,
killed her lover and herself.
Meanwhile, Norman has forced
his mother into the fruit cellar so no one will find her. Lila and Sam check into the
motel as newlyweds. When Sam confronts Norman, Lila hides in the fruit cellar, where she
discovers the mummified corpse of Norman's long-dead mother. Norman knocks Sam
unconscious and attempts to kill Lila, dressed in his mother's clothes and a wig. Sam
overpowers Norman.
It is discovered that "Norman" has
murdered two other women. It was actually Norman who killed his
mother and her lover, and in his guilt, he recreated his dead parent in his mind, having
developed a multiple-personality disorder. And whenever Norman likes a girl, the
"mother" side of his brain murders her out of jealousy.
At
the end, Norman is institutionalized, believing he is Mrs. Bates; in his cell he talks
in her voice, insisting that her son was the culprit all along, and
that she will not be blamed for what he has done.
The
similarities are that a man commits murder in both stories. Both men are
insane.
The differences are that in Poe's story, the
narrator murders one man, and it drives him to admit to what he has done; he is aware of
his deed.
In Psycho, Norman Bates
murders six people: his mother and her lover, three women, and the investigator. He is
unaware of what he has done, burying his mother's murder in his mind, and
becoming his mother mentally—sharing his body
and psyche with the psyche of his mother.
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