Comparing Poe's A Tell-Tale Heart And A & P

To fail at something means to not succeed at your goal. Oftentimes, our goals are clear in our minds, but we don’t always foresee outside circumstances that may prevent us from reaching our goal. In the stories A Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and A&P by John Updike, we are shown that it is not always easy to achieve your end goal because things may not play out the way you want. A Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about 2 men, one young one old, who live in a house together. The story is told by the young man though his point of view. He begins to tell us how he is mentally ill, but that he isn’t as mad as others say he is. He tries to convince us that he is sane, but by doing that he only furthers our doubts of his claims. He then goes on to tell us how the older man he lives with has an eye that looks at him in a way he does not like, and that it is almost like the eye of a vulture. He reveals his plans to kill the old man so that he may close the eye forever. He tells us about how he slips into the old mans room every night and watched him as he slept. On the seventh night, as he is in the man’s room, the man wakes up and his eye is revealed.
For days, he plots on the old man. He wants to get rid of the old man and shut the eye forever. He goes through with his plot to kill the old man and as he cuts up the body and buries the body under the floor, he feels triumphant and successful. It is to his surprise that he hears a knock at the door. The police are there to inspect the house and investigate reports of a scream and struggle. Arrogantly, the young man allowed them in. Thinking they wouldn’t find anything, he felt he had gotten away with the murder. However, his mental condition caused him to give himself up. His failure was due to arrogance. So although he succeeded in killing the man, he failed in getting away with