Premium Harmony
My initial gut reaction to this short story is a sense of uneasiness. I found this story to be quite dark, rather disturbing to some extent. Almost reminds of the ending of the Roald Dahl Lamb Slaughter, when the wife giggles in reaction to the jokes by the detectives about the lamb being the murder weapon. Premium Harmony had its own twist, where the wife literally dies out of nowhere. The fact that Ray seemed to have little to sense of sorrow or grief over the death of her wife, rather joyed that he no longer has to deal with her complaints. It brings to question, what happened in this marriage of theirs? The story mentioned the relationship was perfect but arguments started to build up. These arguments seemed rather petty, revolving around the themes of health, the wife being “fat” and the husband smoking. Makes me think if Stephan King is trying to allude to the American tendencies for unhealthy living. The sudden death of the wife may hold meaning to the randomness of life, that anything can happen. Perhaps possibly a message, not to waste time in meaningless things and in relation to marriage, to make sure you don’t make regrets. Though Ray did not seem to love his partner too much, if he reacted in any way a ‘normal’ person would have, emotions of regret would have probably been evident. The death of the dog was also quite shocking, also out of nowhere, with Ray also reacting the same way that he did with his wife. Clearly, there seem to be no signs of affection and I wonder if this is the harsh reality of some marriages, exaggerated or not. Something which may have started with love, Stephan King portrayed it to develop into a distasteful chore.
The-Tell-Tale-Heart
Despite the bizarre nature of the main character, I found this story to be quite enticing. With the short story being first person and the character’s insane personality, the train of thoughts is rather intriguing and it is hard not to say that the development of his character is what drives the story. Right off the bat, it is quite evident that the narrator is psychological ‘different’, rather crazy-like as he chooses to kill an innocent old man just because he doesn’t like his eye. Weirdly obsessed with the old man’s eye’s, I find it particularly interesting that the main character’s desires to kill the old man even though he seems to hold some sort of respect towards him. This also does not seem to be the only conflict, as the character mentions himself being under control, yet he spent 8 days to finally kill the old man. Whilst despising the old man’s eyes, he spends 8 days trying to get a closer look at it. The short story just seems to hold many conflicting, unpredictable qualities, which may be what depicts the ‘insanity’ of the narrator. The narrator himself seems to defend himself as sane as he managed to kill the old man, believing he has accomplished his clever plan like as if it was common sense. He seems to hold this judgement of himself as rational and right yet from our perspective, his physicological instability proves otherwise. Interestingly enough, the narrator’s body seemed to be particularly ‘normal’ as the loud sound he was hearing after the death of the old man is presumably his own heart, tormenting him and leaving him in agony until he had to spill the truth. Maybe there’s a weird meaning behind the title, the “tell-tale” heart, possibly referring to the truth revealing nature of the hearts, the old man’s fear and the narrator’s sense of guilt that he would have been ignorant otherwise.