Black Cat Suspense

One feature that created suspense in the story was time. In the “Tell-Tale Heart”, time often seemed to speed up or slow down. One example of time movely slowly in the passage is: “I moved slowly-- very, very slowly, so I might not disturb the old man’s sleep”. You almost sense the deliberate movements of narrator. In contrast, the phrase: “The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence”, shows that time is advancing quickly; you could almost see the moon vanishing and the narrator’s quick movements. These “time warps” adds suspense, anticipation, and a growing sense of horror to the story and encourages the reader to continue reading.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator’s obsession causes an unjust death which culminates into internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The

the end of a day and darkness. Poe uses the element of darkness as a visual representation of

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.

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying

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).

Edgar Allan Poe, the acclaimed poet, has created a multitude of short stories, one being “The Black Cat”.The short story depicts an alcoholic on his slow descent into insanity; this relates heavily to the author’s own life, being an extreme alcoholic himself. The narrator of “The Black Cat” is not only driven mad by alcohol, but also by a black cat, as you might guess from the title of the story. At the beginning of “The Black Cat”, you can tell the narrator’s alcohol addiction is taking its toll when he starts abusing his wife and pets. His actions slowly led up to him killing his cat, Pluto, and then killing his own wife because tried to defend their second cat from him. His meticulous writing style, diction, syntax, and imagery in his short stories are used to portray his emotions.

"I grew day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others" (Poe 671). Poe had a very complicated relationship with transcendentalism, and you can clearly see this rocky relationship in two of his works. One of these works is "The Black Cat". A brief summary of this short story; the narrator of this story is an insane man who knows he's about to die. The story talks about a cat that he used to have, named Pluto. He was very close to the cat until he starts to abuse his wife and other animals. The cat no longer likes the narrator, then the cat gets hung. While this happens the narrator's house burns down. Later a new cat comes alone, much like Pluto, and at first, he has a close relationship with this cat. Once it's noticed the cat only has one eye, he hates the cat. Later the narrator strikes his wife on the head with an axe, and hides her body. What he didn't know is while burying the body of his wife, the cat ends up with her. The police then show up just to look around, and the cat starts making noise. The police hear this and break down the wall, and here they find the cat and the man's dead wife. The other literary work that refutes transcendentalism is the poem "Annabel Lee". A condensed summary of that poem; the narrator of the poem, and Annabel Lee fell in love while they are young. Even after Annabel Lee passes, the narrator does not give up on the love they shared. After reading "Annabel Lee" and "The Black Cat", it is clear that Poe denies many concepts of transcendentalism. In looking for the answers to life's questions, Poe relies on the idea that human intuition is harmful. The narrator in "Annabel Lee" alludes to this selfish intuition when his obsession with himself and the idea of love causes him to lose his Annabel Lee. Then again in "The Black Cat", he focusses purely on finding answers within the dark. Transcendentalist does not believe in a dark intuition, they like to look at nature and its light side for the answers to life's questions.

In the same sense, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a study of terror. Poe formulates the story so that the madman narrator paints a vivid and remarkable picture of the fright of his victim:

Throughout all the short stories and poems wrote by Edgar Allan Poe, some connections can be made on the content. The Black Cat, and The Raven, are two narratives wrote by Poe, that unveil the themes and symbols he often uses in his work. Poe is on the mysterious side, but he is also taking the life he is given, and making his narratives raw and realist by some degree. Poe uses techniques that left him express his imagination through writing. There are many different ideas and questions rising from all his work. The Black Cat and The Raven, are two narratives that use similar themes and symbols that allow readers to receive a small connection of the madness inside of the narrators.

Although now seen as the father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allan Poe was previously viewed as a drunken failure. Within Poe’s writings much of his own life riddled with guilt, anxiety, alcohol, depression and death shines through resulting in works that appear unrelated yet once dissected prove similar. This is true for Poe’s works “The Raven” and “The Black Cat”. Poe’s examples of gothic fiction share the use of the color black and a rapid digression of the narrator 's sanity while seemingly unveiling Poe’s internal pain. Despite these similarities, Poe’s works also differ immensely. “The Black Cat” focuses around death while “The Raven” is fixed around discovering the reasoning for a bird 's arrival. Moreover, gothic themes seen within “The Raven” do not necessarily remain constant when compared to “The Black Cat”.

Within us, we have the dark and the bright side. We do the good, but have evil thoughts and some people act on it, thinking it may drag them to feel good in doing so. This informative short-story provides a perfect example on how we take control of our mind. Edgar Allan Poe, the author of “The Black Cat”, develops the central idea that violence solves problems. On the eve of an unnamed narrator’s death, he writes a story of how his life collapsed, turning around his love for everybody and falling into a big pile of a hopeless mess and madness by committing brutal actions.

and darkness. Poe used many of the real life tragedies he experienced as inspiration for

There are two main characters in the story of The Tell-Tale Heart which Poe has refined to reflect the

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.