English Essay 1 - Stolen Car and Tell Tale heart adaptable quotes

Introduction

Stolen Car, written by Archie Weller in 1978, is an Australian short story about a young Indigenous Australian named Johnny and his experience in Perth City. In the text, Johnny encounters several police offers who falsely accuse and abuse him, exposing the racism from people with power in Australia.

The Tell Tale, written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1843, is a gothic short story on an unreliable and unidentified narrator and their plot to kill an old man due to his eye. In the story, the narrator kills the old man and is questioned by the police, eventually revealing the truth as he is haunted by the sound of the old man’s heartbeat.

Stolen Car eye description

In Stolen Car, the narrative opens with a description of the protagonist Johnny, as exemplified through the use of the metaphor and personification "Golden laughter of the sun shone from his yellow eyes”. Johnny journeys to Perth wherein he experiences the harsh reality of stereotypes and racism by being falsely accused of a crime he did not commit. The accusing policeman's eyes are described through gothic imagery as "cruel" and "dark". Later in the narrative, he encounters further prejudice from policeman, with one calling Johnny a "smart little n**ger". He is abused again, resulting in the new description of Johnny's eyes as "murky eyes, dull, muddy coloured as a river. Angry as one too. So much dirt in the water now". The use of the simile and the metaphor in the quote reinforces…

The Tell Tale Heart eye description

In The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator tells us how the idea of killing the old man came about, stating they have no issues with the old man through short syntax in saying "I loved the old man. He never wronged me". They then go on to reveal the true reason they want to murder the old man, unreliably exclaiming "I think it was his eye! Yes it was this!". He describes the eye in a gothic, grotesque manner stating "One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture - A pale blue eye, with a film over it", further explaining the effect of the eye on him in saying "… with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow of my bones". After an intense killing scene, the author uses short syntax again in saying "He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.".

Stolen car description of the environment

In the introduction after the warm and sunny description of Johnny, the mood dramatically changes as a dark and grotesque description of Perth city is presented. The narrator speaks of suburbia saying "red and white houses pimple the hills" and "a new savageness, the city itself, squirms like the awakening pupae of some cruel giant insect". After entering the city, polysyndeton and metaphor are used to create a new description of Johnny: "The sun, his sun, has quite gone now, and he is cold and a little afraid in this dead place that doesn't seem so alive”.

The Tell Tale Heart description of the environment

Dark visual imagery is immediately used when the narrator enters the room of the old man, preparing to kill him but first narrating the room as "His room  was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers)". When the narrator is about to commit the murder, he hears a noise, describing it utilising auditory imagery as "a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well too. It was the beating of the old man's heart". The narrator then murders the old man and the next day police come by to question them. They are feeling confident they will get away with the crime until they hear a ringing, becoming more distinct through the repetition and italics of the previous quote "It was a low, dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton".