Going to Meet The Man by James Baldwin and The Tell Tale...

Horror is ingrained in human society, in our movies, in our music, in our stories. Horror is inescapable; it surrounds us, it envelops us. Horror is part of being human; in fact, the definition is being frightened or disgusted. There are two short stories, which truly fit this definition of horror, Going to Meet The Man by James Baldwin and The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. Going to Meet The Man by James Baldwin and The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe utilize too very different forms of horror, Baldwin using vivid, disgust-provoking imagery, and Poe using terror to provoke fear, however both incorporate a similar theme, that man is capable of horrible atrocities. Plot wise, both of these stories do have elements of horror type fiction, as both do cause strong feelings in the reader. However, they both go about this in very different ways. Going to Meet The Man relied heavily upon the use of imagery, which is incredibly graphic to the point of literal disgust to the reader. The story focuses upon a lynching of a black man through the eyes of a child, and describes in detail what the crowd is doing, and how the black man is being tortured by the people. Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart is a totally different type of horror, as it is more psychological, as it is told by the murderer. It’s also told almost as a justification, as the narrator/main character is very obviously mentally disturbed; this is in direct contrast with the point of view of Going to Meet The