Comparison between Old Mother Savage and The Tell-Tale Heart Writers can use different techniques to achieve the same effect on the audience. In the story "Wild Old Mother" by Guy Du Maupassant, the tragic story of a woman who loses everything is told. The story is scary because it has an ending you wouldn't expect. Also, it can be seen as a sad story because the mother seems to be sad throughout the story. In the end the only thing she has to be satisfied with is that her murder of four young men can make other women feel what she felt when she learned of her son's death. This story can be compared to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" when you talk about the strategies both authors use to scare the audience. Both describe the scenes in great detail to give the effect of disgust. However, Du Maupassant makes the audience feel sorry for the mother in this story, turning it into a tragedy instead of a horror. The story begins with two men walking through a forest. One of the men recognizes an abandoned house. The house is described as "...a skeleton still standing, yet ruined and sinister" (Du Maupassant, 1). The speaker asks the man he is walking with what happened to the people who lived there. The other begins to explain that the father was killed and that during the war the son was sent to fight, leaving the mother alone. It was said that no one bothered her because everyone in town thought she had money. It was said that she almost never laughed, but this was normal for women of that time: "Women suffer with a sad and narrow soul, their life is solemn and hard" (Du Maupassant, 2). With this thought in mind it seems that the people...... in the center of the card...... consider the woman a hero. She's what we consider a "good guy" not because she killed innocent people, but because she took charge of a situation, which is out of the ordinary for women. This is in stark contrast to the ending of Poes. In his story the speaker confesses that he killed the old man because the man's heart, which at that point the reader knows is conscious of the speaker, is bothering him. At the end of his story the audience is happy that the speaker has been captured. Both "Old Mother Savage," by Guy Du Maupassant and "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allen Poe, offer a glimpse into the other side of tragedies. In both we can see the reasoning behind killing innocent people. The difference between the two is that in one case the public remains sad for the killer, while in the other we are happy that justice was done..