Comparison of The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat
Comparison of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” Introduction The symbolism that is throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s “the Tell-Tale Heart,” written in 1843,1845, and “The Black Cat,” also written in 1843,1845, is used to convey both the conscious and the unconscious realities. ... In the first story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the “vulture eye” of the old man (whom the speaker is taking care of) seems to stir something deep down inside of the narrator bringing him to the point of uncontrollable rage. ... In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator’s desire to destroy the old man ‘vulture eye’ may be caused by the outward appearance of the eye. ... ) Unlike “The Tell-Tale Heart,” in “The Black Cat” it is not the eye that causes the violence, but the eye is taken because of the violence. Here, his beloved pet Pluto, the black cat, wounds the narrator and the “fury of a demon” took over every fiber of his frame (Poe 2425). Taking out his penknife, he proceeds to gouge out one of the cat’s eyes. Later, he hangs the cat in the tree in his backyard; however, the guilt he feels from killing his favorite animal wears on him mentally and physically until he finds another black cat with just one tuft of white on its chest. ... The Cover-Ups and Downfalls As with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” where the narrator murders the old man near the end, it is now the narrator of “The Black Cat” who commits the heinous crime of killing his wife when he only intended to slay the cat. ... By stepping in front of him in order to protect the cat she brings about her own demise. ... ” because the cat has disappeared as well. The narrator also claims that “the guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little” for his wife may be gone but as long as the cat is gone too it is an acceptable loss (Poe 2429). ... In “The Tell-Tale Heart” he takes the body and dismembers it in a tub so there is “no blood-spot whatever,” labors carefully to take up the floor boards in the old man’s chamber, deposits the remains, and seals it back up “so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye could have detected any thing wrong” (Poe 2422). As with the very detailed plan of disposing the body found in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator in “The Black Cat” contemplates several different ways of concealing the body after slaughtering his wife. ... After depositing the body inside the false chimney he reconstructs it, just like the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” so that no human would be able to discern the difference, and that none could tell that a murder had transpired (Poe 2428). ... The man from “The Tell-Tale Heart” shows that his actions are to bade the gentlemen welcome, led them on a thorough search of the house ending in the old mans chamber, brought in chairs and desired them to here rest from their fatigues. ... Like the man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator in “The Black Cat” also conveys a very smooth outward appearance. ... Readers also view his conscious as a party of police once again make a search of his home and he takes them into the cellar for the third or fourth time and not a single muscle trembles, his heart beat as calmly as someone sleeping in ‘innocence,’ walking easily to and fro past the very wall that contains the body of his wife that no one is consciously aware of.