Similarities Between The Black Cat And The Masque Of Red Death

Horror Without Beauty: An Insight into Poe’s Subconscious Mind

Edgar Allan Poe did not have an easy life. After losing his mother at an early age and his father abandoning him, he was fostered by the Allan’s but never formally adopted. John Allan and Edgar Allan Poe became estranged. Because of this, Edgar Allan Poe turned to drinking and gambling. Poe lived in poverty and secretly married his young cousin, who later died from tuberculous. When it came to poetry, Poe believed that it should only be attractive to the aesthetics of beauty. In three of his poems, The Black Cat, The Tell- Tale Heart, and The Masque of Red Death, one can analyze that beauty is not seen as much as the horror of the events. Because Edgar Allan Poe led a tormented

Examining this poem, one can draw conclusions about the relationship of the narrator and his employer as similarities of Poe and his foster father. The narrator explains that he loved the old man, but his eye haunts him, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!- yes, it was this!... Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees, very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe, “The Tell-Tale” 961). John Allan did take away any financial support from Poe, however, one can infer that Allan’s disapproval of Poe’s drinking and gambling can be symbolized by the old man’s eye. This poem can be looked at as a dark fantasy of Poe’s revenge to John Allan. The more the narrator stared at the eye on the eighth night of his plot to murder the old man, the more his conscious weighed on him to kill him. The horror of the story is the suspense that Poe portrays in the hours of the stare down with the eye. Poe goes further as to have the narrator dismember the body, but the heart still lived. He describes his feelings, during the visit with the police, “I paced the floor to and fro, with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men; -- but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! What could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore!

Each hour that passes, the musicians in the orchestra pauses the music to listen to the clock chime. The guests all seem to hold their breath waiting for the clock to stop. When the clock strikes midnight and Red Death appears to kill everyone in the castle, Poe writes, “And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (Poe, “The Masque” 691).

Poe may have seen a beauty in the death of all the guests. This can be related to all the happy and successful people in his life that he envied, since he lived in poverty and darkness after his wife died of tuberculosis. As shown above, Edgar Allan Poe’s view of beauty is judged as horrific. The saying, “a drunk man tells no lies”, can be reflected as Poe’s subconscious mind in his writings. The poems, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Masque of the Red Death can he examined as Poe’s thoughts toward the world around him. The Black Cat illustrates what alcohol can do to a person’s character, The Tell-Tale Heart depicts his thoughts towards John Allan, his foster father. And The Masque of the Red Death is seen as his revenge to the happy world he was not part