Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Minister's Black Veil

“The Tell-Tale Heart” Versus “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Sin drives the destructive force of guilt. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story about an insane narrator who tries to convince the audience of his sanity by describing how he murdered an old man with a “vulture eye.” A similar story to this is “The Minister’s Black Veil,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which is about a minister who starts wearing a black veil unexpectedly, and as a result, the townspeople and the minister’s fiancee shun him, forcing the man to live a lonely life. Guilt and sin are portrayed in both short stories. Poe captures the essence of sin and guilt by demonstrating how the narrator is swallowed up in the guilt of his deadly deed, thereby forcing a confession to the police. Hawthorne, on the other hand, captures the aspects of guilt and sin indirectly by implying the black veil conveys a message of everyone harboring a secret sin hidden from others. Both

Guilt has the power to drive a sane person mad and sin has the power to isolate a person from the world. Poe and Hawthorne both depict the dangers of guilt and sin through their short stories; however, Poe does it in a very direct confession of a specific sin, whereas Hawthorne uses an indirect method that reflects on sins of humanity and not a specific act. In Poe’s story, the narrator commits a sin based on a simple thought and the guilt that comes from the completing the act, outweighs the satisfaction of a successful implementation of his master plan. Similarly, in Hawthorne’s story, Hooper wears the black veil to illustrate that everyone lives in a state of sin and no one can escape the guilt, no matter how hard they try to hide it. Sin and guilt go hand in hand because they both have the power to cause irrevocable damage to a person or the perception of a