Short stories are favorites of readers who don’t want to commit to a full book, and Edgar Allan Poe is a favorite author among them. One of Poe’s more known stories is “The Tell-Tale Heart”, which is about how a man murdered his older housemate and was then overwhelmed by the dead man’s heartbeat of guilt. The original version has greater impact than the rewritten version because, although similar in pacing and plot, the differences of writing style and characterization between the versions affects readers more. For the first example, both the original and rewritten versions of “The Tell-Tale Heart” share literary devices such as pacing and a similar plot. The original version includes,” At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone dead.”(Poe). Poe’s use of shorter sentences demonstrates the narrator’s excitement at the death of the old man. Hemphill’s version states “All at once the lantern was thrown wide open, and I shrieked with the voice only a frail man could have if he were about be killed.”. The rewritten version includes shorter sentences similar to Poe’s that pace the story to excite the reader and to build suspense.
Differences between the two are in the narrator's intent in the murders--in "The Tell-Tale Heart" he planned his murder for a long time, stealthily waiting for the right moment, whereas the narrator in "The Black Cat" killed his moment with no forethought, but in a moment of blind rage.
