The Black Cat and Tell-Tale Heart

“The Black Cat” and “Tell-Tale Heart”

Introduction

Imagine the 19th century, on a cold dark night the wind is blowing in the trees and the leaves are blowing away. You have just gotten off work to go get some food, you quickly walk home through the dark, cold night. You are on the couch eating and you hear something fall, you get up to see what had fallen nothing seemed to be out of place. You hear something move, so you are a little scared. You go back to the couch and continue to eat your food. You see a man walk past the window. Your brain freezes in terror, and you feel your heart start pounding quickly. You prepare to scare as your bedroom door starts to open A man is standing there with a knife

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer who was best known for his short stories, especially with his elements of mystery and suspense.Two of his most famous pieces of writing are the short stories “The Black Cat’” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. These two short stories had a multitude of similarities and differences.

Similarities

First, there are many similarities between the two stories. One similarity would be both stories have references to the eye. For example, in “The Black Cat,” the narrator makes references to the eyes by saying, “The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true,a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain” (1214). The narrator shows that he cut the cat’s eyes out of the socket and said the cat would suffer no more. The narrator and cat are very close in the beginning, but when the narrator starts drinking, he becomes very abusive to all that is around him. One day, he goes to pick Pluto, the cat, up but instead of the cat willingly going to him, the cat bites him. This enrages the narrator, which eventually leads to him cutting out the cat’s eye. Additionally, in the “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator makes references to an old man’s eye. This old man’s eye perplexes the narrator throughout the whole story. To the narrator the eye is very evil. The whole story speaks about “the evil eye” of the old man as if the eye is haunting him (1163). The narrator did not want to hurt the old man. He even claims that the old man has never wronged him. He had no real reason to take the man’s life rather than his eye. The narrator is so terrified of the eye.

Another minor similarity would be that both bodies are hidden in a house. For instance, in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator says, “I then took up three panels from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings” (1167). The narrator cuts the limbs and head off of the body and has the pieces under the floorboards in the bedroom. In the “The Black Cat” the narrator shows the reader that the cat was hidden inside the walls of the house (1220). The killer the old man and the cat in hid them in the house. The narrator does not know what to do with the bodies so he hid them inside the house. Both narrators dispose of the bodies inside of the house so that they would not get in trouble.

Finally, The narrator shows one major similarity with the murders in the story. In “The Black Cat,” the narrator shows murder by stating, “I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limbs of the tree” (1215). He hung and killed the cat. The narrator wants to kill the cat for everything it has done. So, his way of doing this is by hanging the cat in the tree and essentially killing it. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator shows that he killed the old man because of the “evil eye.” The narrator said the man smiles when he kills the old man because the eye won’t haunt him anymore. This narrator has planned on killing the old man before, but the night he does it was not planned. It still pleases him because he no longer has to see the old man’s eye. Both of the texts show that the narrators essentially murder the victim highlighting a similarity from both of the stories.

Differences

There are many differences between the two stories. One minor difference is the timeline of both stories. In “The Black Cat” the murder