The Human Heart in Conflict

The Human Heart in Conflict William Faulkner is absolutely correct when he identified “the human heart in conflict with itself” as the only subject truly worth writing about during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. I really enjoyed reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, and I feel as though William Faulkner’s speech was really portrayed in these two short stories. Not only was Edgar Allen Poe’s narrator actually in conflict with himself he was in conflict with a human heart. “But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst.” (Poe, 415) I think this statement from Poe’s short story describes how the narrator was having an inner fight with is feelings for the old man. The narrator in this short story attempted over and over again to make us as reader’s believe him to be sane “And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” (Poe, 414). My favorite struggle the narrator has is when the three officers came about a shriek that a neighbor had heard from the house, the struggle that the narrator has with his imagination and the guilt building inside of him. 1 hint at the ending, her husband accepted the fact that it was his family that would have to draw for the lottery. The sorry fact that Mrs. Hutchinson’s friends were rushing to stone her to death at the end was suprising, I never expected the town folk to want to rush the death of a fellow citizen let alone one that they would laugh and chat with at the beginning of the drawing like they had. 2 Works Cited Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Kennedy 239-245. Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Kennedy

Cited: Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Kennedy 239-245. Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Kennedy 413-416.