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Essay Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

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Edgar Allan Poe has written some great short stories in his time. Two of those are The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat. Both of these stories are as similar as they are different. Poe uses lots of the same parallels in the two stories. However, even though there are lots of similarities, there are lots of differences between the two stories, mostly in the plot line. The Tell Tale Heart is about a man who describes himself saying, “But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind, why do you say I am mad? Can you not see that I have full control of my mind?” (Poe, 64). The narrator is trying to let us know that he isn’t mad, just a little nervous. The narrator then goes on to tell us how that he wants to kill this old man because he has an “eye like the eye of a vulture” (Poe, 64). So the narrator goes into this man’s room for 8 nights in a row, and kills him on the eighth night. He would have gotten away with it too, if he only didn’t hear the old man’s heartbeat coming from the floor when he was talking with the police, and ripped …show more content…

Both of the narrators were so arrogant, that they both caused the downfall of their character. The narrator in The Black Cat would have gotten away scott-free, but he wanted to brag on his wall building skills so while he was tooting his own horn, he accidentally turned himself in by causing the wall to fall, and his dead wife to fall out. The narrator in The Tell Tale Heart also would have gotten away scott-free if wasn’t so arrogant and wanted to also show off his great “burying a corpse skills”. But alas, his conscience ended up getting the better of him and he turned himself in. Both stories also involve the senseless murder of a one eyed being, whether it be a cat or a human. Both stories also involve the burying of human bodies in housing structures such as a wall, or the floor. Those are just a few of the many comparisons between these two

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