The Tell-Tale Heart Vs. The Black Cat

Edgar Allen Poe was a great author in the 18th century. He is the author of both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. Both of these stories show the dark and mysterious ways of the narrator. Well, these stories have been written by the same author. Hence, they have some similarities and differences. Poe is a great writer who can describe a scene in one paragraph. The stories have the right tone and a gloomy mood. Edgar Allen Poe being the author of The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, he shows some similarities like the mood of the narrators though there is a difference in the characteristics of the narrators. The narrators have similar motives and mental states though their plans of action and the outcomes of their crimes are different.

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator both experiences guilt from killing the old man in which he cared for and also the constant plea of proving his sanity. The narrator one day decides that he should kill the old man in which he cares for, due to the fact that he had an evil eye. Though insane and bizarre, the narrator thinks that he is not crazy; he just has heightened senses that allow him to hear things that no human could ever hear. The telling of the story from whatever prison or asylum the narrator is sentenced to is his way of proving his sanity. In the "Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allan Poe uses irony, imagery, and symbolism to depict how the guilt of a human being will always be consumed by their own conscience.

“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.

Comparing Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and The Tell-tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer, wrote many short stories in his lifetime. One of those stories is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In “The Tell-Tale Heart, “ a person murders an old man because of his eye. Poe has also written “Hop-Frog,” where a king’s jester murders the king and his seven ministers as revenge for striking his friend. In both stories, Poe uses narrative elements to develop a narrative point of view. He develops a third person objective point of view in “Hop-Frog,” and develops a first person point of view in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe uses syntax and imagery to develop a point of view in both stories, but uses repetition and metaphors for one story and allusions and sarcasm for the other.

The “beating of the old man's heart” then leads him to confess to the cops. Similarly, The Black Cat is about a man who becomes an alcoholic and he continues to drink a lot which leads him to kill his wife and his cat. The theme in both stories is that of good versus evil. Evil lurks in the hearts of all, and sometimes people act upon it. The author develops this theme by using first person narration and symbolism.

The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven Research Paper The topic of this paper is “The Tell-Tale Heart” compared and contrasted to “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. The biggest difference of these works is that one is a poem, and one is a short story. Yet both of these works of literature have some similarities. Both of these stories are very grim and downright twisted.

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and poems are commonly described a creepy, weird, and insane just like him. Poe was a very dark, untrustworthy person and that projected in his stories. Because of this his stories have unreliable narrators, or people you can not trust who are telling the story. In the story, The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator kills a person, has to explain his sanity, and has a well thought out murder plan. Only an insane person would do any of these things.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” is similarly dark romanticism because both stories showed emotion taking over the character making them see things and making them go crazy. The narrator had a lot of negative emotion towards his victims. This emotion led to the narrator hearing/seeing things. After the In “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrators were taken over from negative emotion, showing Dark Romantic traits.

Both being written by Edgar Allan Poe, the poem “The Raven” and the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” portray vividly the terror of madness and insanity. Despite the fact that they have many similar aspects on this themes, the two tales each has various differences, most importantly the main characters, the causes of their mental illness and the endings.

Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be one of the greatest American writers of all time. His writing is dark and sinister. He wrote of death, murder, psychosis, and obsession. One could only imagine what would bring a person to write such morbid stories. Perhaps, it may be attributed to Poe’s childhood, a past that was sad and far from average. Both of his parents died when he was only three years of age (Shelley). The death of his parents caused a separation from his siblings and he moved to live with his relatives (Shelley). In later years, Poe endured poverty and the loss of his wife-to-be to another man (Clark). Possibly, without those troubling experiences, Poe couldn’t have imagined such eerie and enthralling tales. Some of his most

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.

Having moved into a new house, the narrator happens across a black cat, which then follows him home. Nerves rattled, the narrator does his best to avoid the cat. When that fails he tries to kill it, accidentally killing his wife in the process. After sealing his wife's body into the basement wall, he is interviewed by the police. Not unlike in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator of “The Black Cat” cracks under the pressure of his guilt and gives himself up. Symbolism and suspense make “The Black Cat” worth reading.