The story, "The Tell-Tale Heart", by Edgar Allen Poe, deals with the human mind and the decisions people choose to make. In this specific piece we see how a mentally insane person goes about their decisions and what their thought process is when facing situations that require moral decision making.  According to Seharmes Web article “Moral/Philosophical Literary Criticism of The Tell Tale Heart” this story teaches the reader about life, specifically when you are faced with a problem with something or someone and you have to decide how to handle it. You must be ready for your consequences of your actions because eventually your conscious will catch up with you. Eventually your conscious is going to drive you crazy to the point where you will confess what you did. Jonathan Swift, writing nearly 100 years prior to the release of Tell Tale Heart, tackled this same issue in his short story, “A Modest Proposal.” When it comes to someone's morality you would hope they make the safest and most reasonable decision. However, do to ulterior motives, when faced with a moral decision of right vs wrong both narrators make the wrong decision to show the reader what not to do. 

In both texts, the narrator eventually feels sympathy for the people they take advantage of. In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator does not feel any remorse for the old man whom he takes care of because of his glass eye. Through the whole story he complains how to eye drives him insane and that he has nothing against the old man but he needs to kill him so the eye will stop bothering him. Once he finally does kill the old man, he feels remorse for what he did. He ignored his morals and his conscience and killed a man in cold blood. His sympathy shows that he made the wrong moral decision and that doing something on an impulse can lead to destructive results. Poe wanted this story to be a lesson to the reader. His dark past is why he writes in such grim detail. He wants people to avoid the thoughts and actions he went through when dealing with his inner demons so we don't have to. This coincides with what the narrator in “A Modest Proposal.” goes through. Swift was also brought up in a similar childhood experience. Both of their mothers passed away at an early age and their fathers were not around for much of their childhood at all. Both narrators suffered as children and throughout their early adulthood until they found their own inner peace. They want to help the reader find their inner peace without going through the problems that brought them there. They want the reader to learn a lesson without making the mistake that you learn the lesson from. They want to show you how to handle your problems and in these specific texts they suggest just being honest with yourself and others.  

A person's conscious will eventually catch up to them if they are making immoral decisions. No matter how insane a person can be their will always be a part of the brain that is reasonable. That is why many people go insane because they cannot face reason and reality and they feel the need to do something that nobody else would. Often times it is just one thing that can trigger a person to do something completely irrational. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the main character could be a normal person who works as a caretaker, but he is for some reason triggered by the old man's eye. When he feels the need to kill the old man about it he is faced with a big decision. According to the Santa Clara University Ethics department, there is a choice to be made when facing a moral decision. One option, The Utilitarian Approach is to think about all the factors that carry weight with the decision you are going to make and the other option, The Rights Approach is thinking for yourself and how you will feel after you make the decision. Clearly he takes the Rights Approach but in this case that is the wrong decision. His insanity completely controls his moral decision making and drives him to killing the old man, which is when he finally has his conscious moment. After doing something so terrible and so insane people will eventually realize the consequences of their actions. This is also the case in “A Modest Proposal”. The narrator also takes the Rights Approach to deal with the situation to highlight how the English Parliament was a selfish and greedy group of people. After the narrator suggests eating children to solve the Ireland’s poverty problem, the story begins to slow down in terms of insane ideas. Even though their is nothing reasonable about the ideas provided by Swift, the peak of the insanity was certainly when he recommended weighing, selling, and eating children as the most reasonable way to solve Ireland's problems. 

The moral decision of right vs. wrong is always dictated by a person's selfishness. In “The Tell Tale Heart”, the caretaker of the old man has nobody's else's good intentions in mind other than his own. He feels no compassion for the old man whatsoever, but because HE feels distracted inside by someone else, he feels the need to solve that problem the best he can for himself. Unfortunately in many cases of insanity that results in the death of someone. In “A Modest Proposal”, the British Parliament has one thing in mind and that is money. They don't care whether or not the Irish people survive, but as soon as poverty becomes an issue and their own money become in jeopardy, they begin to act. Not for the Irish people obviously, but for themselves. They could care less whether or not the Irish people live but if their money is not coming in, then they begin to act. Both narrators want to show that when you think about yourself as more important than other people you begin to do crazy things. Selfishness leads to nothing good so they try to teach you a lesson by having you in the narrator's shoes so you can see the wrong thought process involved with moral decision making. 

In both the "The Tell-Tale Heart", by Edgar Allen Poe, and “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift we see the decisions people chose to make under an insane state of mind. While at first glance these two texts might seem radically different, a closer comparison of a common theme will show that, both stories show challenges the human brain face when faced with a moral decision of right vs wrong. In both texts, the narrator eventually feels sympathy for the people they take advantage of. In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator does not feel any remorse for the old man whom he takes care of because of his glass eye. In “A Modest Proposal”, the narrator calms down after suggesting eating children to solve a poverty crisis. This essay taught me that a person's conscious will eventually catch up to them if they are making immoral decisions and that  moral decision of right vs. wrong is always dictated by a person's selfishness.
