The short stories of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black cat” by acclaimed author Edgar Allen Poe are a great example of what can exemplify the darkness a person can succumb to in a certain situation. Both of these marvels share important realizations of thought and subconscious guilt’s to which are used as an example of how two different people in two different situations can have the same outcome. Anger and hatred played major factors in simultaneous tells and additionally how the human mind is very deceiving in the way it projects ideas to the person making them believe what they see and hear is true. Thus, the topic for this discussion is to present the similarities and differences of these two short stories.
Unknown if it is a coincidence …show more content…
The short stories of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” share many similarities with one another but they are also very different in many ways. A similarity which both accomplish is the themes they represent of murder and the belief in supernatural events caused by their own insanity. “The Tell-Tale Heart” can be perfectly summarized in a short sentence by Brett Zimmerman being “Poe 's confessional tale features a psychologically ill protagonist who recalls his grisly murder of an old man” (Zimmerman 342). As mentioned it was about a man who felt justified in killing another person on account of that the main character suffered from some type of mental illness. It was clearly shown that there was something wrong with the mentality of the narrator when he mentioned. “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so, by degrees very gradually I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (The Tell-Tale Heart 691). This meant that according to the main character that the old man’s eye was causing his insanity and it was his justification for killing him. The character from “The Tell-Tale Heart” worked on a plan to murder the old man which became reality after eight days of …show more content…
Slight differences between both stories can be attributed to factors from the way they committed the murders to the way they reacted to them. In “The Tell-Tale heart”, the main character plotted to kill the old man with strategic planning to avoid the risk of being discovered as the narrator stated “and this I did for seven long nights every night just at midnight” (The Tell-Tale Heart 692) when he mentioned how discrete he practiced dimming the lantern without making any noise. Whereas in “The Black Cat” the main character does not extensively plot for this, he murdered his wife on an impulse due to how she distracted him from his goal, who was the cat causing his sanity to fail. Though they shared the same fate, one planned the deed with extreme caution whereas the other reacted on impulse. Lastly, both protagonists were discovered in different but still similar ways as, in “The Tell-Tale Heart” the protagonist confessed due to his mind playing tricks on him, making him hear a heartbeat that was nonexistent. The protagonist of “The Black Cat” was discovered after he actually heard the cat in the wall where he hid the wife’s body thus the police catch him whereas he did not voluntarily admit his
Unknown if it is a coincidence …show more content…
The short stories of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” share many similarities with one another but they are also very different in many ways. A similarity which both accomplish is the themes they represent of murder and the belief in supernatural events caused by their own insanity. “The Tell-Tale Heart” can be perfectly summarized in a short sentence by Brett Zimmerman being “Poe 's confessional tale features a psychologically ill protagonist who recalls his grisly murder of an old man” (Zimmerman 342). As mentioned it was about a man who felt justified in killing another person on account of that the main character suffered from some type of mental illness. It was clearly shown that there was something wrong with the mentality of the narrator when he mentioned. “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so, by degrees very gradually I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (The Tell-Tale Heart 691). This meant that according to the main character that the old man’s eye was causing his insanity and it was his justification for killing him. The character from “The Tell-Tale Heart” worked on a plan to murder the old man which became reality after eight days of …show more content…
Slight differences between both stories can be attributed to factors from the way they committed the murders to the way they reacted to them. In “The Tell-Tale heart”, the main character plotted to kill the old man with strategic planning to avoid the risk of being discovered as the narrator stated “and this I did for seven long nights every night just at midnight” (The Tell-Tale Heart 692) when he mentioned how discrete he practiced dimming the lantern without making any noise. Whereas in “The Black Cat” the main character does not extensively plot for this, he murdered his wife on an impulse due to how she distracted him from his goal, who was the cat causing his sanity to fail. Though they shared the same fate, one planned the deed with extreme caution whereas the other reacted on impulse. Lastly, both protagonists were discovered in different but still similar ways as, in “The Tell-Tale Heart” the protagonist confessed due to his mind playing tricks on him, making him hear a heartbeat that was nonexistent. The protagonist of “The Black Cat” was discovered after he actually heard the cat in the wall where he hid the wife’s body thus the police catch him whereas he did not voluntarily admit his