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Obsession In The Tell-Tale Heart And The Possibility Of Evil

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Obsession, an idea or thought that constantly keeps invading one’s mind, sometimes leading them to do terribly foolish things. This is proficiently depicted in the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson. In “The Tale-Tale Heart”, the protagonist was so strongly obsessed with the old man’s vulture-like eye and hated it with such a great passion, that he decided to take the old man’s life. Similarly, in “The Possibility of Evil”, Adela Strangeworth was so excessively addicted to helping stop spread “evil” in her town that she did not realize that she was being intrusive and invading peoples personal lives. Even though in these two stories tackle different things the main character is obsessed over, the main idea of harming other peoples lives because of their strange obsession remains the same. Clearly, obsession can really make one think so irrationally that they forget the basic principles of humanity and they end up doing ridiculous things without usually realizing until after they have taken the wrong action. The lead character in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, had gone so crazy because of his obsession over his eyes, that he decided to take the old man’s life in a very cruel way. The old man had never harmed, insulted, or wronged him in any way, and rather they both cared about each other but “it wasn’t the man who vexed me [him], but the evil eye” [175]. Gradually, he made up his mind to take the life of the old

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