In both a Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe uses themes of murder and impossibility to build interest in the reader while simultaneously embedding a lesson of action-consequence. Both the narrators in their respective stories share a quality of madness that leads them to murder. After they kill their victims, they experience either a fictitious heartbeat or highly improbable events. Through these mediums, the reader can't help but feel a sense of regret for the action of the killer(s). The reader is vicariously feeling the guilt of the killer. Poe uses this sensation to establish the moral that with every hurtful action to someone or something else, guilt is an inevitable consequence.
The two stories share characters
The two stories share characters