Comparing The Black Cat And The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

I have always had an interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, poems and short stories. The way in which he writes is very peculiar and very original and unique to him. In grade 10, we made gothic movies and focus thoroughly on the works by Poe. He uses first person narrator in both “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” and he does this in a way that is so unreal, and it puts you in the mindset of the somewhat psychotic speaker. I think it is an important topic as there are so many gothic authors out there, but Poe has his own unique way of telling the story that are so distinct to him. I enjoy analyzing these techniques, and also think this topic is worthy of study. Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 2, 1849) is an author in the

James Russell Lowell first published “The Tell-Tale Heart” in 1843 in the Boston Magazine. It was then published 7 additional times during Poe’ lifetime. It is told my an unnamed narrator who tries to convince the reader that he is not insane, but in the end decided to kill an old man due to the fact that he had a “vulture-eye”. “The Black Cat” is another short story by Edgar Allan Poe, which was first published on August 19, 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post. In the story, a narrator carefully conceals his murder but in the end he reveals his crime, as his conscience acting up. Edgar Allen Poe himself says, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” and this could have had an impact on the way he wrote his stories. I believe that Poe uses the first person narrator in his stories to show insanity because it adds to his morbid life. His history seems to be the reason for his writing that have to do with insanity. Given this story of his life, it is possible to think that his use of the first person narrator and the way that he tells the stories could be a mirror to his

He begins to tell a story in which he defends his sanity, despite having killed an elderly man because he felt uncomfortable by the way his eye looked. He had no desire for money but rather the fear that gave him the eye of a faint blue of the elderly. He emphasizes once again that he is not crazy, that their deliberate actions and measures are not those of a madman, although those of a criminal. Every night the narrator goes to the house of the old man and secretly observed the man sleeping and when morning comes behaves as if everything was perfectly normal and he is very proud of this. After a week repeating this activity, the narrator decides that it's time to kill the old man. On the eighth night, when the narrator follows the same routine by going to peak into the old man’s room, there is a change of events; this time the old man wakes up. The narrator becomes motionless, watching the old man while he feels scared for about an hour. The narrator himself understands the fear felt by the old man as he has also experienced the loneliness and terror of the night. The narrator who at the beginning mentions his “sense of hearing [is] acute” begins to hear a muffled hammering or beats and believes they belong to the old man’s heart. Worried that the neighbors would hear all the commotion, the narrator attacks the old man, killing him, after which