Vengeance and Evil in Fiction: Comparing Allende’s The Act of Vengeance and Poe’s The Fall of the Home of Usher.

he sees her (Poe, 2015). The woman seems to be interested in tormenting and punishing her brother for killing her but does not do anything to the killer. She just keeps on haunting him, which makes him sink into mental illness.

Like Madeline, in “The Act of Vengeance”, Rosa waits patiently for her father killer, Tadeo to return so that she can have her revenge (Cox, 2003). The two women share in the need for revenge but Madeline seems to succeed more as she drives her brother more into mental illness (Poe, 2015). When Tadeo returns, “The Act of Vengeance”, Rosa changes her heart and instead of revenging, she falls in love with him. Rosa is vulnerable feels guilty for falling in love with her father’s killer and rapist. Rosa ends up committing suicide for feeling that she has let her father down by falling in love with his killer.

Both “The Act of Vengeance” and “The Fall of the Home of Usher” display women in society who have a bitter heart and are seeking vengeance. However, the women are different in that Madeline is a ghost and Rosa is alive. Rosa had her father killed and was raped while Madeline was killed by his brother but returns to the world as a ghost. The women are different in their way of seeking revenge as Rosa waits patiently for her father’s killer to return while Madeline keeps on returning to torment her mentally sick brother. Eventually, Rosa commits suicide for falling in love with a killer and a rapist and the two women seem to share in death.

References

1. Charters, A. (2015). The story and its writer: An introduction
   

to short fiction.