Compare and Contrast Two Short Stories From Different Time Periods Essay

however from the same genreIn this essay I will equation the pre 20th Century text The subdued pat (1843) by Edgar Allen Poe and the placement 20th Century text Hells Event (1984) by Clive doggy both of which are horror stories.Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston, regular girdy in 1809. He had a brother, Henry, and a sister, Rosaline. In December of 1812 the children were deprive and the family was split up. Henry stayed in Balti to a greater extent(prenominal)(prenominal) with his grandparents. Edgar and Rosaline Poe were taken in by tight Richmond families, Rosaline by the Mackenzies and Edgar by the Allans. In 1827 prior to enlisting in the army Edgar wrote his wrap upset two poems k instantaneouslyn as To Margaret and To Octavia. By 1833 Edgar had begun to issue stories and in 1835 he married his cousin, Virginia save she died 12 age later. On 7 October 1849 at astir(predi ptyalisee) 4.30pm Poe died. The true(a) cause of death at the relatively young age of 40 h as neer been confirmed. Poe was buried in his grandfathers lot in the Westminster burying ground.Throughout his liveliness Poe had been victimised and taken advantage of and I think this may throw a air influenced some of his texts.Clive Barker was born near Penny Lane, Liverpool in 1952. afterward attending junior school in that city, He entered Liverpool University to study slope literature and philosophy. At the age of 21 he moved to capital of the United Kingdom. in that location, he formed a theatre company to perform plays that he had create verbally, and track downed in that medium throughout his twenties as a writer, a director and an actor.About himself, Clive writes My enthusiasm as an artist is rooted not in any particular medium, but in the act of imaging. My books, films, drawings and plays, thought they may seem to be rattling disparate in content, are tacit mapping out different parts of the same landscape that is to say, the k straight offledge base bet wixt my ears, I am motivated to write or blusher by the images and scenes which arise from my subconscious, without invitation, which seems on closer inspection to dramatize elements of my deeper self. contrary Poe, Barker didnt have an unhappy childhood and had a pricy university edu vomit upion and as he says above he uses thoughts form his subconscious to influence his experience rather than as perchance in Poes case, perhaps real life events.Hells event is near a race between Heaven and Hell to see which will be in force play for the next hundred years, the contenders for Heaven dont know about the importance of the race, they think it is just another race. There are quartet contenders for Heaven, Nick Loyer, Joel J aces, Frank McCloud and Lester Kindermilitary personnel. The contender for Hell is Malcolm Voight although he is actually terce people, he is one of three familiars from hell, the idea being that they all force a one ordinal of the race, bourgeois is the fa miliars master and he appears kinda a lot in the story as does hell itself. Joel Jones is one of the master(prenominal) casefuls in the story, as is Cameron, his coach. Joel is killed towards the end of the race and it looks the kindreds of Voight is deviation to win. But just forward the line he is taken e genuinelywhere by Kinder soldiery.The Black Cat is about a man who use to be an animal making lover and had a large variety of pets including birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, a small monkey and a cat called underworld. Over the years the man grew moody and irritable and swore and hit his wife, he neglected and step his pets all except Pluto. But as the man got steadily worsened he suck uped mistreating Pluto. Eventually the man hung Pluto from a tree and on that night his house burned down. The man survived and the morning after the chivy came back to the ruined house to find an image of a long cat with a rope round its neck imprinted on the wall. cardinal night the man was sat drunk in a pothouse and he saw sat on a hogshead of gin a cat that looked just like Pluto apart from a blob of white covering part of its body. The man found that the creature had no owner and so took it home. The man soon started hating the cat as he had done with Pluto. Eventually the man kills his wife whilst trying to kill the cat and is caught by the police.In my opinion there are three main protagonists in Hells Event. Joel Jones is one of these three, Joel is a charitable character, and we are shown that he is a sympathetic or good character from the beginning of the story, at the start of the race Joel is scared because he has had bad dreams this immediately tells the reader that Joel is a sympathetic character. If Joel had been an unsympathetic character he would probably not be scared by a bad dream Joel is superstitious as he has a good luck charm, which as well shows the reader that he is a good character. Later in the story Voight calls Joel a mordant bastard, which increases the readers liking of Joel and has the opposite effect on the character Voight. The occasion makes us like Joel by making us observe sympathetic towards him in this way.Another of the three characters is Cameron, Cameron is another Good character, he is Joels coach. It is not obvious from the first page that Cameron is a good character, on this page Cameron is cursing because he tail assemblyt get a signal on his radio, and so the reader is not sure whether Cameron is a nice character until the second page where he is comforting Joel but comforting him in his own sort of non-sympathetic way for example Cameron says They love you, God knows why they love you.The third main character in Hells Event is bourgeois, even before you know his name you know that Burgess is an at least a nasty if not evil character, the first thing he says in response to Cameron saying, What the hell is going on is Precisely that Mr Cameron hell is going on. This is quite a h umorous yet nasty thing to say, also Burgess is wearing a goat skin coat which still has the hooves and horns hanging from it, this emphasizes the fact that Burgess is a bad and un-sympathetic character, a good character would be very unlikely to wear this sort of coat.Clive Barker has tried to make burgess more horrifying by describing the coat in detail, he says He wore a coat apparently made of several goat-skins. The hooves and the horns still hung from it. The caudex on its fur was brown and gummy. On page forty-five about halfway through the story Burgess admits that he works for hell. The very fact that he works for hell will tell the reader that he is an evil character. Although Burgess is an evil character some of the things Barker writes, which Burgess says are quite witty and funny.In The black cat there are also three main protagonists The two cats and the man who tells the story, which is told in first person whereas Hells Event is create verbally in third person. You never actually learn of the mans name, so for the purpose of this essay I will repair to him simply as The man. Also you never learn of the second cats name and so I will refer to him as The cat.The man who tells the story is a good character at the beginning, but as the story goes on he gets more ill tempered and violent until at the end of the story he is a violent character. The story starts after it has finish, with the man who must be in prison, writing about what has happened to him. It makes the reader smack sorry for him, he tells us that he is going to die tomorrow which makes us feel sorry for him. He also writes, My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have panic-stricken have anguish have destroyed me.Poe makes the dustup have more empathy by using repetition e.g., have terrified have tortured have destroyed me, the words getting more disa strous each time. Then the story properly starts, with the man describing how he grew up amiable animals and being tender of heart, he describes how he had lots of animals, which he love this turns the reader to thinking that the man is kind and wondering why he was about to be killed at the start of the story, which makes you want to read on. As the story goes on the man starts to get violent towards his pets and eventually kills them all, including Pluto his character gets more violent and Poe shows this by describing how the man feels at that predict for instance he says The fury of a demon instantly feature me. I k sore myself no longer. My soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body.There isnt much that I raft write about the cats as they dont actually say anything, but Poe makes us feel sorry for them, and in turn makes us hate the man more by describing in graphic detail how they are mistreated. For instance he writes I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor masher by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket. Barker also uses this technique in hells event as I have written above.The first split of Hells Event is written in the past tense, you can tell by the way dates are mentioned that this is so. E.g. Hell came up to the streets and squares of London that September, icy from the depths of the ninth circle, it says that September which means, the September that has been. After that split up though the story goes into the present tense, as if the events were happening now, for example microphone who is one of the race commentators says And what a day it is. As if it is happening today. The narrator is an omniscient narrator, for instance he knows that Joel feels sick in the pit of his brook and that Cameron smelt a fix when he saw Voights double. exploitation an omniscient narrator has advantages because it enables the writer to explain how a character is feeling.In The Black Ca t the tenses are written in the opposite way to hells event, the first paragraph is written in the present tense where the man is probably in jail and is writing the story of how he ended up in his present situation. You can tell because of how the first paragraph is written, for example, But tomorrow I die and today I would take my soul, by reading this a reader can work out that he is writing in the present. After this paragraph he starts reading the story he has written, which is in the past tense, and uses words like was and were which are in the past tense. These are employ in sentences like Pluto this was the cats name and my pets of course were made to feel the change in my disposition. Because the man writes his story in first person he can tell the reader his thoughts, you could say he is an omniscient narrator, but and then again he does not know the thoughts of the cats.There are quite a few differences in The Black Cat and Hells event in terms of technology and chang e over the years, these includeHogsheads of gin, which are no longer utiliseServants, the only people who still have servants now are the extremely wealthy and royalty.Gallows, These apply to be used for putting people to death.Radios, Not invented in the 1800sCars, Cars were not around in the early on 1800s.There have been lots of changes in spelling and punctuation since The Black cat was written, for example the line I even offered her personal fury, which the man uses to express how he treats his wife would not be used today, today a more direct approach would be used for instance you might use I even hit her which is a lot more to the point.Some words have completely new meaning, nowadays a word like dress which is a robe usually worn by a woman, but in the 1800s it meant the garments that a person was wearing. The choice of words, which authors use, has change since the 1800s. For example in the 1800s Poe used I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. Wh ich means the man swore at his wife, but in Hells Event barker just simply uses the actual words, which express his characters feelings more, for example, Shit, said Cameron as he was plunged into darkness.Shorter words are now used instead of longer more difficult ones like pick up which means drunk and felons cell, which means prison.There is no open manner of speaking in The Black Cat instead there is reported speech. In this story there are lots of things that would not be written today, e.g. Pluto this was the cats name was my favourite pet. Would be written today as Pluto (this was the cats name) was my favourite pet.I preferred hells event to The Black Cat because there was a bit more detail which made it more horrific, like the part where Joel is killed, Joel mat the last of his strength falter his arm could keep the mouth at bay no longer. Despairing, he felt the teeth at his brow and at his chin, felt them pierce his remove and his bone, felt, finally, the white nigh t evade him, as the mouth bit off his face. Also The Black Cat is harder to read because a lot of words in it are no longer used. Both storys were good and I like the horror genre in ordinary anyway so I enjoyed reading the storys.