Random School Essays

Comparison-Contrast Essay

Bethany Watson
Mr. Zach
Comparison-Contrast Final Draft
14 April 2022
   One may wonder what happens when someone is driven to insanity. For these characters, it leads to committing a crime. Though the short story, “Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, and its adaptations: Tell Tale Heart (1960), and the SpongeBob Squarepants episode “Squeaky Boots” (S1 E17) have many differences; the theme remains the same. The sources have different causes of being pushed to the brink of insanity. Although there are many significant similarities, the differences fairly outweigh them thoroughly throughout the building of the characters, and story. 
   The short story, and the 1960’s adaptation, though have almost identical themes, have bewilderingly unsettling differences. Some agitating differences consist of an “evil eye” in the story, but a love interest in the film, which provides a route to the different motives for their murder. In the short story, the eye supplies a motive for the narrator to commit homicide “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever”(Poe 73).  The narrator despises the “evil eye” so much, to the point where he would exterminate the person who bears the eye. The main characters go crazy before killing their supporting characters. The two protagonists have independant causes for going insane. In the 1960’s adaptation The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe (the main character) goes berserk because a girl he was infatuated with slept with his friend. After witnessing this, the narrator (Poe) gets murderously violent with blinding rage, and kills his friend. In the short story however, the narrator had an old man in his care. But there was something strange about the old man; his eye. He had a horrid eye that haunted the narrator. It drove him insane. In the story, the narrator explains that he loves the old man; but cannot stand the eye: “I found the eye almost closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man that vexed me, but his evil eye” (Poe 74). As the narrator’s attempts to murder the old man drag on suspensefully. He cannot go through with the killing, because he cannot see the eye that triggers his insanity.
   Through many contradicting differences between the Spongebob Squarepants [S1-E17] adaptation of the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” has many key similarities that keeps the story along the same line. There are some little details that make the story like “The Tell-Tale Heart.” For example, both perpetrators watched the antagonizer sleep for at least one night. In the story, the narrator watched the old man sleep for 8 nights before he could finally commit the murder he desperately needed to complete. These culprits had committed their crimes without being in their right mind. Lastly, both characters confessed to their crime shortly after they had committed it. In the short story, the narrator soon admits his crime; speaking as he’s ripping up the evidence from the floorboards. “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-- tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe 78). In the Spongebob Squarepants episode, Krabs said “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-- tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the squeaking of his hideous boots!” The lines are nearly identical. These small details put the story together; and the level of detail put into the cartoon to make it as similar as possible without traumatizing children says a lot.
   Although the differences between these sources are prominent, there are some similarities that make the stories the adaptations that it strives to be, and remains in the end, the same. No matter if it's about obnoxiously squeaking boots, an obsession with an eye, or a failing love story; the essence remains the same. One may say that even though there are many differences; the adaptations are masterpieces on their own. The sources, though strongly unique in many ways, are the same story; just retold in different ways.