Comparison of The Tell-tale Heart and The Black Cat Essay

The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart are two similar short stories written by Edgar Allen Poe. Each story is narrated by an unnamed main character. Each narrator insightfully recites his exact thoughts, and the reader is able to attain a first hand description of imagery, mood, and motifs. As the reader, we are thrown into a first hand account about everything going on inside the characters mind. The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart share similarities in mood, symbolism, narration, foreshadowing, motives, and writing style.

In The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator is very descriptive as the story unfolds and the plot becomes more in depth as we turn each page. The narrator focuses his description on his cautionary approach to the murder and describes many vivid details. He was terrified of the old mans filmy eye from the reaction to the details. Just before the murder, the narrators caution was so defined that it took close to an hour for him to finally reach the mans bedside to commit the crime. In The Black Cat, the narrator is just as descriptive and insightful. Just as the narrator in The Tell Tale Heart, this narrator was unnamed as well. The narrator describes his childhood and adulthood by highlighting his love for animals. Each narrator does a wonderful job of describing the scene before the reader. More importantly, both narrators describe everything through their mental thought processes, giving the audience insight into each narrators disturbed mind. In turn, this gives the reader a chilling foretaste of how someone can easily be changed from a normal person into a killer and the appalling crimes they can execute.

The symbolism of each story contributes to the dark mood. The black cat is historically a symbol of witchcraft and evil. Many people believe that a black cat crossing ones path is considered bad luck, or that a black cat following you is a sign that something bad may happen. Many people during the Middle Ages also believed that the devil would take the form of a black cat, and on holy days such as Easter, black cats were routinely hunted down and burned. The cat stalks the narrator and has an eerie, intelligent presence. The aggravation coming from the cats constant presence is what drove the narrator insane. Similarly in The Tell Tale Heart, the old mans filmy eye is the symbol of evil. The filmy eye of the old man is comparable to that of a vulture, which is thought to be the most symbolic animal of death. The idea of an evil eye is also historical, and present in religious teachings as well. The belief in the evil eye dates back to ancient times, and even today, References are made to it in Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu religions. The belief centers on the idea that those who possess the evil eye have the power to harm people or their possessions by merely looking at them. The evil eye drove the narrator mad, and its historic evil symbolism makes it even more convincing. The eye evoked the darkest evil from the narrator, and he ultimately committed murder as a result. The presences of these symbols of evil are apparent contributors to each narrators insane thoughts and actions.

The narrators of both The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat appear to be sociably disturbed individuals. Each narrator does not seem to have any friends to whom they can talk to. The audience is left with only the thought process of two mentally unsound individuals who are detached from society. The narrator in The Tell Tale Heart has a wife, but he does not talk with her during the story. The fact that the narrator did not speak to his wife was very odd and I believe it was one of the main causes of the characters behavior. The narrator says he is a happily married man but attributes his downfall to alcohol abuse and to the human spirit of perverseness which he defines as one of the primitive impulses of the human heart. The narrator is ultimately consumed by his own addiction and failing mental health. He says he loved the old man, but it is apparent that he did not care for him if he was willing to murder him. He did not even have a justifiable relationship with the old man to say he loved him. Seclusion is where the morbid thoughts of both narrators are left to prosper. From the real life stories and history of serial killers and murders, we know that the seclusion plays a major part in the way killers think and act.

The narrators in both stories become mentally disturbed, making their intentions more likely to be dangerous. Under the surface, it is apparent that each narrator has motives of cruel intentions. These intentions are hidden during parts of the stories, but both have similar foreshadowing of the crimes that will soon be committed. Because each narrator is mentally unsound, the reader is given a sense of eerie things to come. By the end of each story, both narrators commit gruesome murders. In The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator repeatedly said he was not sane, leading readers to believe the exact opposite. He repeatedly says he isnt insane but the reader can understand the lack of sanity of the narrator when he explains how he murdered the old man. He described the caution he used during every step of the murder. Both of the narrators were caught when their guilt and anxiety surfaced when the police was present. This is seen frequently seen with real life murders, the closer the police start coming the more they become sloppy at hiding the sins they have committed.

Though the stories both seem to share many similarities, there are also some small yet notable differences between the two. One of the major differences is in the way the characters plan out the murders. In The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator spends time crafting out the murder, and believes he has figured out every last detail. He then carries out the murder just as planned; however, what he didnt plan out is what would happen after the murder. He never predicted the fear and guilt of being caught coming back and haunting him. In The Black Cat, not only was the murder of his wife not planned out, but it was also fully unintentional. Another difference between the two stories is the psychological terror versus actual terror that the characters faced. In The Tell Tale Heart, the sound of the old mans heart beating was in his mind, while the sound of the cat inside the wall in The Black Cat was there for everyone to hear.

In conclusion, each story is especially similar primarily through the overall mood, symbolism, narration, motives, and foreshadowing. In each story the narrators were mentally unstable. They narrated with meticulous insight from their own insane minds. Both were driven to commit inhumane acts of murder. As a reader, we see this from each time they murdered they would think vividly with details as they committed these horrific acts. Each narrator had evil contributing symbolic factors that lead them to commit murder. These symbols created a mood of darkness and evil. Both narrators were at one time assumed to be normal people who were driven to commit one of societies most taboo acts. This leads to the notion that humans are easily manipulated, and may even be driven insanity if invoked properly. Is this the case? Are humans easily manipulated and can be turned into killers? These stories allow us to take a look inside a psychopaths mind and even deeper inside their thoughts, we experience the reality inside the world of horror stories.