Rivalry In The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

Fiction is a term used to classify or describe any story created by imagination. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are considered a work of fiction, they entangle the mind of the reader by creating an alternative reality and exploring the horror genre. “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”, are two stories that share many similarities and differences in terms of themes. They are surrounded by elements of insanity, murder and by horrifying nighttime scenes, it adds a morbid touch and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats until the end.
A theme is known as a universal idea, the subject of a piece of writing, or an underlying meaning. Themes can be interpreted in many ways, and throughout the stories, there are many that convey the true idea …show more content…
What’s different is that in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator can’t stand the old man’s vulture eye, he knows that the old man is completely innocent but it overwhelms him, even though the narrator’s acrimony is built up based on almost nothing, he even states it in the story: “ 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! He had the eye of a vulture.” (1) In “The Black Cat”, the rival is in the form of a cat, which seems to appear at the worst moments when the narrator’s anxiety is at spiking levels, costing this one to feel annoyed and to act in a sickening manner. An example can be observed in the text as it says: “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.” (520). Another theme very common in the stories is the Gothic style. Since this two stories originated on the19th century, they possess some definite aspects of the Gothic style, which are for example: the gloomy settings, like the room where the old man was sleeping, the “evil eye”, the chilling …show more content…
In many of Poe’s stories the characters seem to be part of a family or at least be visiting a friend or other known relative. However, the story always leaves the protagonist or main character alone, facing his crimes and sins. In the “Tell Tale Heart”, the protagonist has the old man, he is a friend, an acquaintance who has not provoked or done anything to the main character in any way. Still, the narrator ends up killing him, giving the reader a window into the mentality of the characters, showing how the aspect of loneliness changes them into paranoids, who go from calm to panic in a matter of seconds. As it says on the text: “I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.” In “The Black Cat” the situation is different, the protagonist is not trying to kill his wife, on the contrary, his temperament, drunkenness and even his mentality get the best of him causing this one to lose his patience and act without thinking. From the moment he killed the cat and his wife, he ends up completely alone, unleashing his paranoia as the cat seems to take on a supernatural existence becoming a symbol of the narrator’s delusional and altered state. The narrator shows no grief after killing his wife, the only person that was there for him, instead he takes pride in how well he hides the body, as he