Essay Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

“The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” share many similarities in the plot and narrators. Poe used animals in both stories, and in both stories the narrator is driven to murder an animal or a person with an animal characteristic. However, there are also many differences between the two. In one story, the narrator is being driven to murder by alcohol, while the other simply kills a man because he is paranoid. The similarities between the two are numerous. In “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator talks in depth about his old neighbor’s eye. He says “ His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it”. He then proceeds to kill the old man because he is paranoid about the single vulture eye. In “The Black Cat”, the narrator grows to hate his cat and constantly avoids him. At first, he just gauges out the cat’s eye, leaving him with one …show more content…
Both narrators in the stories are going mad, but in one, it is because of alcohol, and the other is a result of paranoia. The narrator of “The Black Cat” is suffering from alcoholism. In the beginning he loves Pluto more than all of his other pets, but once he starts drinking he ends up murdering Pluto. He does say in the beginning that he is not mad, but does admit that alcohol has been affecting him. However, the narrator of “ The Tell Tale Heart” swears from the beginning that he is sane and asks“Can you not see that I have full control of my mind? Is it not clear that I am not mad?”. Another difference between the two stories would be the way Poe builds up tension until the death of the old man in “The Tell Tale Heart”, and makes the deaths in “The Black Cat” very quick and sudden. The narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” is cunning and carefully plans his murder, while the narrator of “The Black Cat” acts on impulses and surprises the