The Deadly Sins By Flannery O Connor And Edgar Allen Poe

Have you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat or that greed is one of the seven deadly sins? Flannery O Connor and Edgar Allen Poe prove these two statements to be true. Both authors leave their readers thinking twice before they go peeking at the Christmas gifts under the tree or sneak that last piece of chocolate cake from the refrigerator. Their Catholic readers may even make a visit to a nearby confession box. A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Cask of Amontillado are short dark stories that use iconic twists that lead to their victims executions. Deception is the unmistakable underling plot in both stories with O Connor s and Poe s common use of character traits curiosity and greed-differ, ironically they both choose the most significant yet very different events in the Catholic religion; namely, life and death, to symbolize an end to a new beginning, to play out the executions of both, the Grandmother and Fortunado. Crafty, insincere, dishonest and downright underhanded can all be used to describe both the Grandmother and Montresor. These two characters emanate deception as soon as we are introduced to them. O Connor starts her story by telling us flat out, The grandmother didn t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing every chance to change Bailey s mind(183). She manipulates her son, seizing the opportunity of the Misfit being on the loose, using his children as weapon to get