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Comparing the "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart.” Edgar Allan Poe has often been considered the father of the psychological thriller. Two of his best examples are "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado." Both are excellent short sto ....

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.... murder, but they also escape external punishment and suffer endless internal turmoil. Therefore, "The punishment comes not from a church, a law, or even from society: it comes from some inner compulsion of the evil-doer himself who suffers...Thus he has willed his crime and he wills his retribution" (Davidson 189). Both characters take the lives of the men in the stories with little regard, "These characters are themselves god-players" (Davidson 189). In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator confesses to the unsuspected police to receive his punishment, " in this respect the god easily passes into the devil and becomes his maker and his slayer both"(D ....