Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs and The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe is one of the most well known poets. Poe is known for his eerie and terrifying tales. Poe has three similar stories that stand out. “ The Cask of Amontillado” is about a man named Montrassor looking for a way to seek revenge on Forchanado. Montrassor seals Forchanado into a room behind the wall in his catacomb. “The Black Cat” is about a man that has a strong loathing of his cat and kills it, as time passes, he finds another cat and absolutely hates it, more than the last cat. This loathing leads him to get frustrated about it and kills his wife because she tries to stop him from killing it. Lastly “The Tell-Tale Heart” this is about a man that is disgusted by this man's eyes, so he stalks him and then suffocates him and then cuts him up and goes crazy because he doesn’t want to get caught. These three stories are all similar but all have I different kind of intensity to them.” The Black Cat” is the spookiest one out of the three, the narrator because

On January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the most influential writers of all time was born. This person was Edgar Allen Poe and his works of literature would change the world of writing forever. Edgar Allen Poe was a master of creating a mood of suspense and exhibited this through two of his stories, “The Raven” and “Cask of Amontillado”, where there was much suspense built through many different methods. Poe creates suspense by using word choice, plot structure, and literary elements.

People reads books and they get their captured by the suspense the authors use to write their stories. Suspense is a key point for most readers it keeps them reading the book to see what happens next. Both Edgar Allan Poe and Richard Connell are very good authors that use a lot of suspense throughout their short stories. Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” are two stories full of suspense. It’s unpredictable, surprising that we can’t figure out what happens next. .Through conflict, setting, and diction Poe and Connell are able to build suspense.

Have you ever wondered why you might find yourself on the edge of your seat at a horror movie? Or, maybe you find your heart racing once you get to the climax of a certain novel? Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American authors known for his dark tales and poems. When reading his works, many feel drawn to them because of wanting to know what will happen to the characters. In many of his stories and poems, Poe uses different elements of suspense that contribute to the plot and features they have. In, The Raven and The Pit and the Pendulum, the creation of suspense is shown through the utilization of sound devices, imagery, and allusions.

As the story goes along the reader can see how the narrator’s alcoholic behavior increases dramatically. The alcoholism plays such a large role in the development of the narrator and even the development of the story that the narrator even goes so far as to call “It” a disease. As the story progresses the narrator slowly gets angrier and more violent. Leading to him going into a drunken rage causing him to gouge out the eye of his beloved cat Pluto because he would not show him any affection. Then the story goes on through a series of events involving him hanging his cat, because he was so upset at the fact that he caused his cat so much pain and that the cat would not want to be around him. After a while he and his wife find a new home and after some time of living there he notices another black cat next to a huge barrel of alcohol. Now the barrel is very significant part of the story even though that section of the story is only briefly mentioned. The black cat next to the barrel of alcohol could defiantly signify that his alcoholism is going to kill him or lead to his demise in some way. In the end of the story he ends up hating the new cat because his wife loved it tremendously. The cat constantly kept rubbing on his legs while he was walking, making him believe the cat was trying to kill him. He ended up getting tired of his cat’s actions so he attempted to kill the cat, followed up with him killing his wife, which lead to his execution.

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and Beloved by Toni Morrison, the authors describe cruel and flawed aspects of society as system and human nature in individuals within a society. As a punishment for adultery, Hester Prynne, the main character in The Scarlet Letter, was required to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest and stand on the scaffold in the town center every day to endure public shaming. During his stay at Walden Pond, Thoreau escapes the rigidity and critical nature of society, denouncing societal norms and prejudices in favor of a simpler, more solitary life. Throughout Beloved, Sethe witnesses the horrors of slavery both first hand and through her friends and family. Hawthorne,

After killing his cat, Pluto, the narrator describes seeing a similar cat in his home. The first time he saw the identical cat was immediately after he had been drinking. The circumstances in which the new cat was introduced makes it difficult to know if there even was a second cat or if the vision of the cat was a product of the narrator’s guilt. This is because, in some cases, when an individual is surmounted by guilty feelings they can invent different things to make them feel less guilty. Sometimes that could be finding someone else to blame, but for the narrator of “The Black Cat” it was getting drunk and pretending that the cat was still alive so he did not feel responsible for his death.

Suspense is one of the most important elements in a scary story or movie, and without it, there it wouldn’t be scary. In the story “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, he creates a very suspenseful mood to entice readers into continuing to read the story. In the story, “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W Jacobs, he also creates a suspenseful mood to make readers interested and read until the end of the story. The authors of these stories, Edgar Allen Poe and W. W. Jacobs, also use other techniques like setting details, imagery, and a character’s feelings and dialogue. Even though both authors use these techniques, there are some differences and even some similarities between their usage of them.

Edgar Allan Poe had a peculiar way with his work. He was adopted early in his life to be spared from poverty and heartache (Roberts and Zweig 226). But in the Big Read it is stated that he still felt a satisfaction from women’s suffering. Poe just wanted to be a writer and followed his passion into judging others work to support himself (Roberts and Zweig 226). Some say that he is selfish and indulgent. Sadly the death of Poe is still a mystery but his works affect people’s lives on a daily basis. The elegance of Poe’s prose invokes an emotional reaction he was subject to during his childhood that later led to the creation of the most influential works of the 19th Century.

The two stories were a great story to read and it had an amazing background as the author express himself into details thought out the story. My thought of these two stories was shocking because it terrifying, in how a person can think about doing a such thing. I think the story I like the most is “The Black Cat” because the story had more action as for how the narrator goes from loving his cat to being afraid of the cat and not liking the cat anymore, then he killed his wife. The story was confusing as well as interesting to read. As I read the story it made me want to keep reading until the end because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. In the story “The Cask of Amontillado” was a good story too, but the story mostly just had

Previously untouched by the horrors of slavery, the woman owns the “pets”, or slaves, alongside her husband. As he mistreats the animals, he also begins to mistreat her. As Poe writes, “The moodiness of [the narrator’s] usual temper increased to hatred of all things and all of mankind… and ungovernable outbursts of a fury… [his] uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and most patient of sufferers” (699). Touched by the repercussions of the corruption of slavery, the previously “uncomplaining” and docile wife immediately recognizes the evil in her husband’s attempted murder of another black cat, another slave.

While doing it, tears streamed down his face. He is ashamed of what he has become. He knows that the cat had loved him and had given him no reason to hang it. What he did was an act of pure perversity- doing wrong for the sake of wrong. In The Black Cat, there are many themes such as transformation, irony, and loyalty.

“The narrator could not tolerate the cat scratching him nor could he abide his wife’s attempt to save the cat.” He also believes that he is the victim of this story. “I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once to take its flight from my body.” He blames the “Fiend Intemperance” for his lack of self control.

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.

One way Poe demonstrates suspense in these works is through the use of an unreliable narrator. In both of these pieces, the main character is a mysterious and untrustworthy narrator. In “The Raven,” the narrator starts by saying, “ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / While I nodded, nearly napping” (1, 3). The narrator has just awoken to the sound of knocking at his door. While it is up for debate, the narrator could very well be dreaming or hallucinating about the raven and the tapping, but the reader and even the narrator are waiting for a signal to explicitly show that it is just a figment of his imagination. In the other story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the narrator is introduced to us as criminal who has been sentenced to death. The narrator describes the moment saying, “The sentence—the dread sentence of death— was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears [before swooning]” (263). The reader discovers at the beginning of the story that the narrator has committed a crime so terrible that he has been sentenced to death. The audience spends the whole story trying to figure out when he will die and by which type of torment he will die to. In both of Poe’s works the narrators are unreliable characters who the reader cannot completely trust, which leads to the suspense of waiting for the whole truth.