Author of Mysteries to Horror, Edgar Allan Poe Wrote Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat in One Year

Edgar Allan Poe was well known for his dark stories such as, “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart.” His stories and poems focused mainly on death and the sinister side of a man’s mind. In general, many of his main characters were not mentally stable or were dealing with alcohol abuse. Poe’s life never seemed to offer him a break, he lived hardships after hardships. Nevertheless, his pain and problems contributed to numerous of his writings and poems. The reader is able to see the connections between his life and the characters. “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” although have many similarities in style, also have many differences.

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

This quote shows how he begin to feel the guilt of his murder later driving him crazy making he confess to his deed. Thus the character proves my thesis statement by showing how he felt

“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night” (Poe 92.) Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story, “The Tell- Tale Heart,” is not only a story of the murder of an old man, but at closer analysis, it speaks of a sadomasochistic motive behind the crime. Hollie Pritchard’s criticism of the story helps to evaluate various aspects of this piece of literature, giving a deeper, darker meaning behind Poe’s words. The first person narrator of the tale is convinced that he is not mad, or mentally ill.

The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is unmarried; not so in “The Black Cat.” The narrator in “The TellTale Heart” smothers an old man with whom he lives and conceals the body below the floorboards of his bedroom chamber. The narrator in “The Black Cat” murders his wife with an axe and walls up the corpse in the cellar of the apartment in which they live. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” carefully planned the murder of the old man; in “The Black Cat,” the murder is unplanned, a crime of passion. These are minor differences, however. In truth, the narrators of both stories are strikingly similar. As evidenced in the summaries above, both narrators are guilty of murder and experience an irresistible urge to confess to their crimes. While each explains the circumstances of his hideous actions, he also attempts to defend his sanity. Each provides a rational explanation of his mental fixations and portrays his criminal activity as excusable within the logic of his confessions. These two narrators use the form of the confession to explain away the content of their actions, but Poe uses this intimate connection between form and content to undermine their reliability as

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

Edgar Allan Poe shows how subconscious fears and guilt can lead to insanity through the irrational behaviors shown by the narrators in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”. Both narrators have committed a crime due to their insanity in an attempt to relieve themselves from their fear and guilt, but instead ultimately cause their further decline of mental stability.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” are two short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Both stories share the elements of death and outrageousness; both have frightening night time scenes as well. In both of the short stories the protagonists of both stories seem to have very little or nothing in common. Their marital status, living conditions, and responsibilities are very different. If the reader looks more closely, the two men appear alike in many ways: both share their criminal history in flashback form. More importantly, as both characters recount their tales, they vehemently defend their sanity. These striking similarities become more vivid, and it soon becomes apparent that the two men are way more alike than believed before.

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.

In recalling the details of the crime, the narrator provides no defense of his innocence—only his sanity. Presuming that his confession to the police and his revealing of the evidence was true, the character’s guilt at this point is indisputable, and he has only his own defense. He accounts the homicide in detail, describing how he expertly crafted and executed his plan, while constantly assuring that he is not mad. The assertion that he makes, however, is a method of reverse psychology. By insisting that he is not mad, he manages to thoroughly convince the judges and jury, and by extension the reader, of his

The murdered ends up taking responsibility for his actions at the end of the story. He

“True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” Poe wrote this line in his “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and he very well could have been speaking about himself. Many generations have debated on whether or not Edgar Allen Poe was a mad. Reviewers and readers have looked at Poe’s work for nearly two centuries, trying to pick it apart and see if it’s the ramblings of a mad man or well pieced together stories of a literary genius. It’s almost easy to see from the point of view of those that would go as far as to call Poe insane, because he doesn’t make it easy to prove otherwise. Poe’s style is centered on gritty gothic themes, insanity, and murder. Anyone that reads one or two of Poe’s stories can agree on that fact, and many would also agree that, albeit a bit mad, it’s also genius, because Poe’s work does something that not many authors’, not even today, does: it provokes thought (Poe 619).

“Burduck then goes on to ponder how Poe used cultural anxieties and psychological panic to advantage.” (Grim Phantasms, G.A. Cevasco). In The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, a nameless man narrates the story of how he murdered an elderly man because of his eyes. In his short story The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe shows the themes of guilt and the descent into madness through the narrator, in this gothic horror story.

Throughout the thousands of years our old Earth has been around the idea of writing books and telling stories has marked itself as an important part of the history of the place we live in today. There are many famous English historians that have achieved the status of being considered, classical literature writers. These writers have mastered writing, many of them have dedicated their entire lives to it. Out of a vast quantity of these English historians, one stood out to me, his name is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s writing had its own unique gothic and horror style. The story, The Tell-Tale Heart is one of his very popular pieces of literature, it not only tells a story, but uses Poe’s unique style of writing to silently incorporate different genres, themes, and symbolism to create a sub-story within the text itself.

The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrates an imagination in his head that depicts a chilling murder. The narrator is taking care of an old man, and shows that he cares for him when he says, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.” The narrator becomes consumed with the old man’s eyes as he begins to transform the care he had for the old man and imagines a murder. The narrator describes a chilling story that reflex what he is imagining and becomes an unreliable source.