Tell Tale Heart vs. the Black Cat Essay

One of the most influential authors of all time, Edgar Allan Poe, uses dark imagery and complex syntax to make his short stories and poems dark and mysterious. Poe’s dark, tragic backstory contributes to his dark writing style. His father left him when he was young, and his mother died when he was only three. He then went on writing poems, and after he finished his school, he found his fiance cheating on him, so he moved to Boston to get away from everything he knew. He then married his cousin when she was only 13, but she died 11 years after. Annabel Lee was likely based off of his wife's death, having wrote it shortly after her death. Overall, Poe used his dark imagery and complex syntax to write his gothic short stories and poems such as Annabel Lee and Fall of the House of Usher.

Afraid of his master, the cat slightly wounded the narrator on the hand with his teeth. Because of the cats reaction to his picking him up, the narrator pokes out one of the cat’s eye. The eye of the cat which is

To conclude this argument it is very clear that the actions that took place in, “The black cat,” are the narrators fault. It is on account of him being an alcoholic, being in a poor mental state, and being abusive to his wife and pets that the fault lies in the

The storyteller begins the story by stating from an early age he has had an obsession with animals. Poe states, “This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.” (Poe) This statement is evidence of the insanity the narrator experienced at a very young age. He goes on to explain that he and his wife have many domesticated animals, including Pluto, a large beautiful black cat. He describes the mutual fondness between him and the cat. This relationship between him and the cat, is strange. For years they have a growing friendship, until he started drinking alcohol in excess. The narrator goes on to explain how one night after getting completely intoxicated, the cat panicked and bit him. This causes the author to become angry and in a psychotic fit of rage, he takes a knife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes. After this encounter, the cat fears him, and tries to avoid him at all cost. In the beginning, the storyteller is regretful and feels remorseful for the cruelty. But soon we see the narrator’s insanity expressed when Poe states, “But this feeling soon gave place

In the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses many varying symbols, symbols that represent more than one feeling or idea. The old man’s eyes in the story are symbolic of a few things. The eyes are symbolic of how old man had a distorted view of the world which could possibly be why the narrator felt he had to kill the old man. The narrator calls the eye the “vulture eye” symbolic of the narrator’s feeling that because of the eye the man is evil (“The Tell-Tale Heart”). Kenneth Silverman says, “... eyes in Poe’s works arouse the dread of being consumed” (207). This is similar to how the narrator felt that the old man’s eye was controlling and took over its surroundings. Poe also portrays a blindness symbolized

The story begins with the narrator boasting about his genial disposition and love of animals, which regrettably does not last. Under the influence of alcohol, he soon finds himself growing “more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feeling of others” (671). It is not long before he begins lashing out at his wife and their pets, with the initial exception of his black cat Pluto. Unfortunately, Pluto’s reprieve does not last long before the narrator begins to abuse him as well. The narrator explains how after a night of drinking he thought the cat was avoiding him and as he grabbed him, Pluto bit him on the hand. It is at this point that the narrator completely loses control and cuts out Pluto’s eye. “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame” (671). The narrator’s alcoholism, though severe, has at this point not yet managed to strip him of all his humanity; he tells how in the morning, after having sobered up he “experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse” (671) about what he had done to the cat.

Before the episode of killing Pluto, the narrator, after returning home drunk and sensing that the cat was avoiding his company, seized it violently. During this physical bout the cat

One night, the narrator comes home from partying completely drunk. He starts thinking that Pluto hates him so he grabs the cat and cuts out one of his eyes with a knife. In the morning, not long after he had cut one of Pluto’s eyes out, he gets a terrible impulse and hangs the cat from a tree. Writing from his jail cell, the narrator claims he did it “precisely because he knew it was wrong.” The same evening of Pluto’s murder, his house burns down.

A couple of days later, the same cat is found with one eye cut out, just like Pluto, and many readers speculate that the cat was actually a resurrected Pluto. The missing eye can, however, be explained by the narrator’s erratic behavior while drunk. If he was capable of cutting out Pluto’s eye and forgetting about doing so by drowning himself in wine, nothing was stopping the narrator from doing the same to the new cat and merely forgetting about it due to alcohol. Moreover, another source of paranoia for the narrator was the new cat’s constant presence. The cat was always around the narrator and even slept by his side, though the narrator himself took this as a tactic of haunting that the cat was using in order to freak him out. The behavior can of course be explained reasonably by the fact that the cat was a cat and merely wanted to be around his owner. In addition, what caused the narrator to truly despise the cat was a gallows shaped white spot that became more and more evident the longer he was with the family. This can also be explained by the narrator’s alcohol problem and abusive behavior as cat hair grows back white when they are scarred. In his drunken state, the narrator could have been harming the cat and causing him to scar, perhaps even making the scars in the shape of a gallows to punish himself with the reminder of

An unnamed narrator begins the story by claiming his is entirely sane, despite the narrative he is about to describe. He confesses a great love for cats and dogs, both of which, he says, respect the fidelity of friendship, unlike fellow men. The narrator marries at a young age and introduces his wife to the domestic joys of owning pets. Among birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, and a monkey, the narrator singles out a large and beautiful black cat, named Pluto, as his favorite. Michael Porter, an author for the website “GradeSaver”, wrote an article about The Black Cat and an analysis and overview about the story and what it means. Porter wrote a section on about the changes in the narrator when he said, “The narrator begins to suffer from violent mood swings, predominantly due to the influence of alcohol. He takes to mistreating not only the other animals but also his wife” (Porter, Web). During this uncontrollable rage, he spares only Pluto. As he turned more towards alcohol the beatings became more and more

The day before the death of the narrator he begins to pen the mishap that occurred before then. The narrator talks about all his precious animals and the fact that he would never mistreat them. He was peculiarly fond of his black cat Pluto. Though his wife thought that all black cats were secretly witches. This fondness of animals started grew with him as he started to become a man. The narrator had a tenderhearted with his animals, expressly Pluto. However, he's kind heartedness takes away for his manly hood. "I not only neglected, but ill-used them". The narrator kill all his animals and his wife except the second cat with the white bully.

He claims that he hung the cat because it loved him, and because it did not do anything to deserve the punishment. Because of this, the sin that he committed would jeopardize his soul forever. No sane man would do this to an animal that he claimed to love. Again the narrator is not in control of his body and is being controlled by the supernatural and shows signs of mental illness.

In the short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe the reader is led onto a journey in which they are told the gruesome actions of a disturbed narrator. This subjective narrators' actions are spurred by a heavy alcohol addiction and deteriorating mental state. The narrator tells the reader of his deeds,which ultimately led to his demise, starting with the killing of Pluto. Pluto was the household cat of the narrator and his wife. He was very much cared and adored for but one night after returning home “much intoxicated” the narrator carved one of the poor beasts eyes after he upset him. After that event a disagreeable mood leeches onto the narrator and he decides to hang the pet using a noose and attaches it onto the limb of a tree . A

For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him”. He abused all the other animals and even his wife but he never hurt Pluto. The first black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s evil heart. It shows favouritism and obsession with black cats from the start this story, later after he had murdered Pluto, he still went out and realised when he saw the second cat that it is what he was looking for. “What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes.”. The second black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s guilt. This fact about the cat made him hate more simply because he felt guilty of what he had done to Pluto. His guilt and religious torment gives us an insight to his insanity.

At the beginning of the story, the man was essentially “happy” with his wife and black cat, Pluto. The story is light until the man begins drinking. He has begun to like that the cat did not want to be around him and avoided his presence anymore. This is possibly due to the fact that he is not happy with his drinking. However, one night when he came home and frightened the cat, which