What similarities exist between Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and “The Masque of the Red Death”?

“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death” both tackle the themes of death, sin and guilt, but in very different ways.  Both use irony to tell their stories.

In both stories, death takes innocent victims.  The narrator kills the old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” because of his supposedly evil eye.  The people in “The Masque of the Red Death” are dying from a plague.  The deaths have something else in common: murder. 

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator murders the old man in cold blood—he commits an overt sin.  In “The Masque of the Red Death” Prince Prospero murders his people by a sin of omission.  He does nothing while they are dying.  The other sin he commits is gluttony.  Prospero throws a lavish party for all of his friends while his people suffer.  He has the money to try to help them, but he does not.

When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. (enotes etext p. 4).

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” death is more direct.  The narrator feels that he is very clever because he kills the old man and buries his body under the floorboards.  He, like Prince Prospero, feels that he is completely justified in doing this.

Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work! (enotes etext p. 4).

However, guilt overcomes the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a way that it does not ever really capture Prince Prospero.  The narrator descends farther and farther into madness, until he finally confesses because all he can hear is the murder of the old man’s “hideous heart!”  When death confronts Prince Prospero, he reacts arrogantly.

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? (p. 6)

There is a certain amount of irony in each case.  The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Prospero in “The Masque of the Red Death” are both essentially defeated b their own egos.  The narrator in "Heart" thinks he is smart, but his guilt traps him.  Prospero thinks he can outwit death, but death finds him.

How do "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Raven" compare and contrast?

What an interesting question. I must admit, I don't automatically connect these two texts together when I think of Poe's fiction. Clearly, there appear to be more differences than similarities, such as the way in which one is a poem and the other is a short story, one is written in the first person and the other is written from the omniscient point of view. However, having said this, I think one connection we can make between them is the way in which both texts concern man's attempt to escape death and its impact, and the depressing failure with which such escape attempts are met.

In "The Raven," for example, the speaker is trying to desperately get over the death of his beloved Lenore. However, the appearance of the raven and the sinister way in which the speaker tortures himself by expressing his own doubts and his own grief about her death clearly indicates that the impact of her death upon the speaker is not something that he will be able to shake off lightly and forget about. Consider how the poem concludes with a description of the raven and its impact on the speaker:

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Clearly the grim realities of death are something that will haunt the speaker for the rest of his life. They are not soemthing from which he can escape.

In the same way, "The Masque of the Red Death" concerns the futile attempt of Prince Prospero to cheat death and escape the plague that is ravaging the country. Note the scenario that is given:

When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and lighthearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys... The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within... With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to the contagion.

The story is of the attempt to cheat death, and of its ultimate failure, as death himself, personified in the figure wearing the mummer's mask, appears as the masque and lays waste to all inside. The final, apocryphal paragraph of the tale makes clear the way that death cannot be cheated or gainsaid by its reference to the "illimitable dominion" of "Darkness and Decay" over this land.

What are the similarities between "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Masque of the Red Death"?

All three stories deal with untimely death, premature burial, and the grotesque. In Cask A man tricks a rival into a crypt and seals him alive within the walls.

The Tell-Tale Heart shows a man killing an older man (he is bothered by the man's eye) and confessing when he still hears the man's heartbeat under the floorboards.

Masque is a bit different, but there are still some threads to draw from; a prince has gathered all his loyal subjects to his castle to party and wait out the death that is sweeping the countryside. The death still comes, however, and all inside die horribly, entombed within the stone walls forever.

So, in the end, people die unnaturally in all three works.