Comparing The Black Cat And The Tell-Tale Heart

In “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator is scared of the old man's eye stating, “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever” (Poe 1). This quote helps to develop how much of a fear the caretaker has of the old man's eye by explaining exactly how it made him feel and how fearful the eye was to him. In “The Black Cat” the narrator also has an irrational fear which he explains, “When I first beheld this apparition—for I could scarcely regard it as less—my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house” (Poe 7). The quote is explaining the how fearful the narrator is when his wife brings home a cat resembling one the narrator had killed earlier. The similarity in the fear of the narrator's can be developed in these quotes through their irrationality of the fear. Both narrator's fear not of the person or animal but of a certain physical appearance, such as the old man's eye or the cats resemblance to the second narrator's cat he hung. These irrational fears developed in the stories create a similarity between the narrator's and supports how these short

Edgar Allan Poe has a dark sense of literary meaning. Within "The Tell-Tale Heart" it 's shown when Poe incorporates dark elements of literacy through the guilt of a murder. Which became forced out by the hypothetical beating of a heart.

“The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are both written by a famous American writer named Edgar Allan Poe. In these stories, he writes as a nameless narrator that at first seems calm, but really, has an issue with something to the point where he has to kill it. In both of these stories, he does ending up killing someone or something, which would make it seem like it's the same story, but they have some similarities but a lot of differences which I will explain in the following paragraphs.

In both the “The Tell Tale Heart”, and”The Black Cat”, the stories end with a death of a person. Some events in the murder are similar and different.

The Narrator in “The Black Cat” is explained as a man who fell into alcoholism and let deception take control over his mindset (Poe 79). His change of perspective over things causes him to believe his beloved first black cat (Pluto) is evil and demonic when the cat bites him one day (Poe 80). During the illusion from the excessive alcohol, he hangs Pluto (Poe 80). From guilt further on from killing his first cat, the narrator adopts another black cat. A while later, he comes to believe that the new cat has the same characteristics that Pluto had (Poe 82). In an act of fit from the new Black cat almost tripping him on the cellar stairs, the narrator starts to try to kill him with an axe (Poe 84). His wife comes in and tries to stop him, but instead that causes him to kill her. The narrator hides his wife’s body in a cellar wall, meanwhile the cat vanished (Poe 84). Four days later, the police came to do a thorough search. The narrator acted strangely calm and innocent, as if he had done nothing. They discovered her corpse with the cat standing on her head howling in the cellar wall though, and took the narrator into custody. (Poe 85-86).

The beating of the heart and the black cat's eye caused the narrators to go crazy, they murdered people and they then became very guilty and revealed their hideous deeds. In the stories The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, both narrators realize their acts were wrong, but they did them anyway by rationalizing that they were driven by circumstance. The Tell-Tale Heart is about a man who can't stand the vulture eye of an elder. He decides it would be best to kill him. He buries him under the floorboard, the cops come to investigate.

Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” while having many distinct differences, are largely similar in theme and

(Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart, 1).The narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart claims that he has some kind of disease which makes all his senses very sensitive and that is the way how he explains all his foolish thoughts. In the story The Black Cat the narrators is almost same. Their sanity is something that no one can understand. The way how they act and how they make decisions. It may be noticed that in both stories the narrator thinks a lot about what would happen if he does certain things and what are the consequences.

Edgar Allen Poe was one of the most influential and important writers of the nineteenth century. He was the first writer to try to make a living only writing. One of Poe’s most popular short stories, “The Black Cat”, is considered horror fiction or gothic fiction which Poe is known for in his books and short stories because it was a popular genre during his days. In Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat”, Poe uses a horror fiction genre, a mentally deranged and evil narrator/character, and symbolism of death to make a thrilling story with tons of suspense, drama, and gruesome detail.

The first one, is about an alcoholic man that killed his wife thinking she was one of the pet he killed in one of his drunken wraths. Later the man tried to hide the evidence on the basement wall, but it ends up being discovered. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story about a young man planning and carrying out the murder of his roommate, due to the obsession that he was consumed by evil. After hiding the body beneath the floor, he confessed about what was done. These two stories have lots of similarities Both of the stories, not only are told in first person, for the reader can get a better perspective of the main character, but have the common murder, intrigue and ending of the story. Nonetheless, there is a negative aspect as well. Both narrators are madmen, and the reader needs to analyze a bit more the meaning of what the narrator says.. For instance, in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the character tells the reader that he can hear the beating heart, but because he is crazy, the reader should figure out that is the heartbeat of the character he’s listening to. Also in both stories the narrator goes to extremes to convince the reader he’s not going crazy. In “The Black Cat,” the narrator is very arrogant, he brings the cops to his house and show them around thinking he has done a terrific job hiding the evidence, only to get busted by the same cops when

The reader is subject to feelings of fear, anxiety and shock. Also horror genres generally anticipates the characters psychology. It shows how the person can go from a stable individual to loosing all sanity which was also a characteristic offered in The Black Cat. While The Black Cat offers the psychology of the unknown man we are also offered this particular element in Poe's The Tell Tale Heart. One can see signs of deterioration of the narrator. He continually lets it be known that he is fine and has no symptoms of anger however his actions state other wise. The narrator also suggest that no feelings of remorse or guilt can be noted almost as if no wrong has been done. The narrator is going through a downward spiral of psychological matters which is an element offered on horror fiction as this allows the reader to achieve those emotions of anxiety, fear and again suspense. Poe offers almost all elements of horror throughout his short stories without the gore and brutality which ultimately makes him a phenomenal writer. Poe is more in tune with allowing the reader to accomplish emotion while allowing them the reader to get a sense of who they are in terms of what frightens them and offers them

Edgar Allan Poe is known for his dark and thought-provoking horror stories. In particular, The Black Cat does just that. The story focuses on the rationalizations of the horrific actions of the narrator. A black cat is introduced to pounce down on the rationalization of the narrator’s actions. Edgar Allan Poe also constructs a story where the main basis of the narrator’s decisions are ethical egoism and the principles of conscience. Poe constructs the black cat as the conscience of the story to depict the guilt of the narrator. This is clearly emphasized when the black cat is in the presence of the narrator, but the consciousness of guilt is also present in the absence of the black cat.

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.

For an hour he stood at the old man's chamber door quietly. In his madness, which he insists it's just an "over-acuteness" of his senses, he believes he hears the beating of the old man's heart. At first, he reveled in the old man's terror but with every moment that he heard that beating sound his fury grew more and more. The more nervous he became, the faster and louder the beating sound became. When he could take it no more, the storyteller goes into a paranoid frenzy. During this frenzy, the storyteller is afraid that neighbors will hear the beating of the old man's heart. This causes him to take action. He quickly subdues the old man and kills him. But is it really the old man's heart the storyteller hears? Even after the storyteller kills the old man, he still hears the heart slowly pounding and then finally stopping. Was it the old man’s heart, or rather was the storyteller hearing his own heart beat in his ears? As the storytellers rage and excitement grew, so did the sound. It did not go away until after the storyteller slowly calmed down, until after his deed was finished.

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.