Annotated Bibliography
Benfey, Christopher. “Critics on Poe.” Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd Edition. Ed. Robert Diyanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 165-166. Print.
Christopher Benfey discusses the approach Edgar Allan Poe uses when he composes his short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Benfey suggests that Poe writes in an approach to confuse his readers through the narrators by having them want to confess their acts of murder. He goes on to talk about how Poe is focusing on not why they murdered, but why the characters are so obsessed with confessing to their crimes, “all record a confession – a perverse confession since the crimes would otherwise have been undetected” (165). Similar to …show more content…
Poe’s narrator has no real motivation, other than his psychotic obsession with the old man’s eye. The narrator knows what he is doing is ultimately wrong; similar to a psychopath, but the narrator eventually succumbs to his evil thoughts and decides to take the old man’s life. “Although there is no way to understand this kind of motivation except to declare the narrator mad, the reader must try to determine the method and meaning of the madness” (1). In the end, May suggests, that the sound the narrator perceives, the beating of his heart, is really the ticking of a clock, and with every beat of his heart, it takes him one step closer to confessing to the …show more content…
Unfortunately, he seems aware of his decline, but finds it hard to change it. First, when the narrator cuts out the eye of his pet cat and then when he eventually hangs the cat. The author suggests the narrator is slowly going mad. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others” (Poe 138) After the house burns to the ground the narrator refuses to see any kind of connection between the hanging of the cat and the burning down of the house. He tries to look for a sensible explanation for the things that are going on around him, but in reality, he realizes that he is going mad. It appears that most of Poe’s work are dark and mysterious, most likely because his life was entangled with
Benfey, Christopher. “Critics on Poe.” Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd Edition. Ed. Robert Diyanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 165-166. Print.
Christopher Benfey discusses the approach Edgar Allan Poe uses when he composes his short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Benfey suggests that Poe writes in an approach to confuse his readers through the narrators by having them want to confess their acts of murder. He goes on to talk about how Poe is focusing on not why they murdered, but why the characters are so obsessed with confessing to their crimes, “all record a confession – a perverse confession since the crimes would otherwise have been undetected” (165). Similar to …show more content…
Poe’s narrator has no real motivation, other than his psychotic obsession with the old man’s eye. The narrator knows what he is doing is ultimately wrong; similar to a psychopath, but the narrator eventually succumbs to his evil thoughts and decides to take the old man’s life. “Although there is no way to understand this kind of motivation except to declare the narrator mad, the reader must try to determine the method and meaning of the madness” (1). In the end, May suggests, that the sound the narrator perceives, the beating of his heart, is really the ticking of a clock, and with every beat of his heart, it takes him one step closer to confessing to the …show more content…
Unfortunately, he seems aware of his decline, but finds it hard to change it. First, when the narrator cuts out the eye of his pet cat and then when he eventually hangs the cat. The author suggests the narrator is slowly going mad. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others” (Poe 138) After the house burns to the ground the narrator refuses to see any kind of connection between the hanging of the cat and the burning down of the house. He tries to look for a sensible explanation for the things that are going on around him, but in reality, he realizes that he is going mad. It appears that most of Poe’s work are dark and mysterious, most likely because his life was entangled with