Comparing Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart And The Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents David and Elizabeth Poe were professional actors. They had three children: Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. When in 1817, Mrs. Poe died, Henry was taken to be raised with his grandmother, Edgar was adopted by the wealthy couple, Frances and John Allan, and Rosalie was taken by another couple. The luckiest one became Edgar because his new parents were very wealthy people, so he was able to go to different schools. When he was seventeen, he entered the University of Virginia, but because of his gambling and drinking problems he was dismissed from there.

Concerning “The Black Cat”, Poe vividly portrays individuality as a connecting theme to Romanticism because of the narrator’s treatment of each character of the story’s characters, his wife and the cat. In the story, the narrator kills his wife in a “more than demonical” rage, for no other reason than to express his rage at his wife’s interference between him and the cat (723). He acted alone, with no prompting from anyone other than himself. The cat as a character receives no different of treatment from the narrator’s wife: even the wife’s own intervention on the cat’s behalf does not save it from its eventual demise, rather the narrator “firmly resolved to put into death”(723). The only way the cat escapes death is through hinting at the narrator’s murder to the police through the house’s walls.

“The Black Cat” is one of Poe’s more gruesome stories. It is one of the darkest stories he has written. The narrator opens the story by saying he is sane. It is the night before he dies. The story talks about the narrator’s past and how he knew so many people who all

The events that unfolded in Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The black Cat,” are all due to one person, the narrator. It is because of his Mental state, being an alcoholic, and being abusive to his wife and pets that the fault lies heavily on the narrator. What this paper will entail is all three of the reasons why it is the narrator's fault for what happens in the story and it will come to a conclusion based off the findings in the story.

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 to David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins - both of whom died before their son was three. Edgar went to live in Richmond, Virginia with John Allan, a wealthy tradesman, while his

Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. Poe, a son of an actor, never knew his parents very well because his father left early on, and his mother died early in his childhood. He went to live with the Allens, he made a bond that influenced him and his writing with Frances, the wife of John Allen. Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, but didn't receive enough funds from John Allen to continue, he then turned to gambling but only ended up in more debt.

Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator in “The Black Cat” describes himself as a lover of animals and a man with a kind heart. But he uses his animals and alcoholism as an excuse for his perverse behavior. However, Poe drops hints though out the narrative to tell a different story. His violence towards animals tells the story of an irrational man who weeps while hanging his cat. Therefore, Poe employs the narrator to show the human tendency to use scapegoats to shift blame for the wrong thing we do.

The narrator 's guilt consumes him once more, the reader may assume, once he says, "I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell" (Poe, 716). The narrator 's guilty conscience causes him to hear and contemplate evil thoughts. This battle with his conscience, merges into one of Poe 's different thematic subjects, good vs. evil. Last but not least, Poe exhibits guilt after committing the crime. The narrator cannot handle what he has done. The officers in the story present an even larger obstacle because their presence sends the narrator into insanity. He says, "Villains! I shrieked, Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear upon the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!" (Poe, 718). The narrator cannot sustain his act of being a 'fearless ' person, for his guilt drove him into such madness that he felt that he had begun to hear the beating of what he had thought to be the old man 's heart, long after his gruesome murder (Kirkland, 13). Poe uses these examples to convey the message that guilt is sometimes too much of a burden on the human heart. In addition to Poe 's theme of guilt to deliver his message, he also uses symbols.

Poe was born on January 19th 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s parents names were David and Elizabeth Poe. When Poe was very young his father left him and his mother. Later on Poe’s mother died in a house fire. This was one of his inspirations for writing. When poe was 6 he went to school in England for 5 years. At one time he had no money, no job, and no college education. In 1827, Poe joined the army, but it didn't last that long. In 1837 poe went to New York City and had some of his poetry published. In 1836 Poe married his cousin, Virginia. He was 27 and his cousin

Edgar Allen Poe was known for his dark-romanticism writings which evoked horror in readers. Seen specifically in his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, readers are able to get into the mind of the mentally ill narrator who murders an elderly man, one whom he claimed to love. Poe created conflict in this story by having the narrator admit to loving the man and having him be his caretaker. Conflict, and the story line, is created because it makes readers question why he would commit such a heinous crime as killing and dismembering the man. Readers eventually find out that it is the elderly man’s eye that pushes the narrator to do what he does. The narrator is trying to justify his actions and prove his sanity by explaining how he observes

Poe has a history of presenting characters with personal flaws who often confess to atrocious deeds. Both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat tell the story of a seemingly senseless murder complicated by the vaugery of preternatural occurrences. The reader is forced to question whether or not they should believe what they are being told. Both of these narrators, the wife killer and the landlord killer, are unreliable and have a similar theme. The narrators are both mentally unstable however their conditions vary. The psychological implications of each character's’ attitude suggests while both are crazy, one is a sociopath and the other is a psychopath.

Edgar Allen Poe has created many stories that are dark, suspenseful, and murderous such as The Tell- Tale Heart and The Black Cat. His works tend to resemble one another in style, mood, theme, and plot. The ways in which these elements are displayed show contrast between the two. The Tell- Tale Heart and The Black Cat are two brutal tales with similar themes about being insane. Both stories are told from the first person point of view with a maniacal narrator.

When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.

Stories like the “black cat”, “The tell- tale heart”, “The masque of the red death”, and “Morella” all deal with horror, murder, and sudden death. The short story, ‘The black cat’ gives the audience a story line visual of the mind of an alcoholic and the way his behavior changes over time, in different scenarios the character starts to turn abusive to the animals that he once loved. The man then starts to isolate himself from the black cat which was his favorite animal until one day he snaps and kills the black cat by hanging it to a tree with a rope. Days later a cat comes back around him that shows almost the same identity of the black cat, but the only difference is the white patch which is the bottom part of the cat body. the man then starts to grow jealous as his wife shows attention to the new cat which then leads him to murder his wife and stuffing her dead body in a wall, he later confesses to the crime and spends life in prison. This story is very dark and gives a clear identification of the mind of a troubled individual who then takes out his anger by being abusive to the animals in his environment and later his wife. Different aspects in Poe’s stories look deep into the mind of a person and the reasons that leads to murder and death.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. (A-1) His parents were English born actors Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe Jr. (A-2) After his parents died he was raised by his godfather John Allen, a wealthy Richmond merchant. (B-1) The Allan’s took him to Europe where he began his education in schools in Scotland and in England. (B-2) He returned to the U.S. in 1820 and