Discussion Topic
Comparing "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Summary:
Both "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe explore themes of guilt and madness. In each story, the narrator commits a gruesome murder and is driven to confess by overwhelming guilt and paranoia. The unreliable narrators and the psychological horror elements are key similarities, showcasing Poe's mastery of dark, psychological storytelling.
What are the similarities and differences between "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat"?
In "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado," both stories are told from the perspective of narrators who may be considered unreliable in their presentation of reality. Both stories feature bizarre murders in which the narrators attempt to justify and rationalize the killings.
In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the increasingly desperate narrator attempts to convince the reader that the old man had an air of sinisterness about him, via an "evil eye," that justifies the murder. In "The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator, Montresor, also provides vague reasoning for murdering his foe by explaining that Fortunato was not genuine in his interactions with Montresor. In both stories, the victims are hidden in the houses in which they were murdered. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the victim is chopped up and hidden in the floorboards. In "The Cask of Amontillado," Fortunato is walled up in the catacombs of...
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Montresor's estate.
The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart," unlike Montresor, is unable to contain his guilt and emotions related to the murder. He is very quickly apprehended—as he almost immediately confesses to the murder in a fit of madness as police search his house. Montresor is more cool and thoughtful with his murder. He, conversely, successfully gets away with the murder and only admits to the killing of Fortunato on his death bed, decades after he committed the murder.
It's fun and easy to compare these two classic American horror short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado.
SIMILARITIES
- A mentally unstable narrator and protagonist
- Protagonists who narrate to an unknown character (or directly to the reader)
- Brutal murders in the final conclusion
- Settings at night and in the dark
- Gothic settings
- Underground locations
- Unspecified reasons for the murders
- Murder victims with deformity or weakness
- Protagonist exhibits love and kindness in days before murder
- Only two primary characters--protagonist and antagonist
DIFFERENCES
- One protagonist/murderer with a guilty conscience (TT-TH) and one with a clear conscience (TCOA).
- One murderer is caught (TT-TH) and one is not (TCOA).
- One victim is old and defenseless (TT-TH) and the other is relatively youthfu (TCOA).
- One murderer mutilates the body (TT-TH) and the other leaves his victim to die on his own (TCOA).
- One murderer is "nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous (TT-TH) while the other remains calm throughout.(TCOA).
Both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" are early examples of what has come to be known as "perfect-crime" stories. In these stories the murderer thinks he has planned his murder perfectly and cannot be arrested or convicted. But in each perfect-crime story the murderer is exposed because he has overlooked one detail. The theme of such stories is always: "There is no such thing as a perfect crime" or "Murder will out." In the very popular television series Columbo starring Peter Falk, the shows were almost always perfect-crime stories. The murderer was usually a very intelligent, sophisticated man or woman who thought he or she had everybody fooled, including Detective Columbo. But the flakey detective usually trapped the perpetrator by turning up the one little incriminating clue his suspect had overlooked. An excellent example of a perfect-crime movie directed by the famous Alfred Hitchcock is Dial M for Murder, a 1954 film frequently shown on television.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote grotesque, macabre stories with a unique approach to each one. ‘The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” have several similarities.
Subject of the story
The kind of evil that Poe writes about is not about monsters, fantastic heroes or even the supernatural. The stories are about ordinary, seemingly, real life situations. The readers of the story can find aspects of the situations in which they may find a shred of themselves in the characters.
Settings
The similarities in many of Poe’s stories begin with the setting. For most of “The Black Cat,” the setting is the narrator’s house(s). In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator lives in the old man’s home which becomes filled with violence, death, anguish, and isolation. The homes are places where mysterious things happen.
The Narrators
The narrators are nameless in each of the stories. Like the narrator in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the "cat" narrator also begins his story with the declaration that he is not "mad," and that his story is no "dream.”
“The Black Cat”
Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not --and very surely do I not dream.
“The Tell-Tale Heart”
True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
Both stories have similar narrators who spend part of their time trying to convince the readers that the cat or the old man made them commit their heinous crimes. Even more to the point, the men become obsessed by the victims: the old man’s eye and the first black cat. Both of the main characters commit their crimes against innocent, unsuspecting victims.
The Resolutions
The outcomes of both of the stories are essentially the same: The men are so sure that they have committed the perfect crimes that they encourage the police to go to the cellar in the “Cat” and to sit in the spot where the old man is buried in the “heart.” Overconfidence catches both of the men and the police find the wife’s body along with the wild cat, and then the old man’s body that has been cut apart.
The Policemen
Like the policeman in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the cops in “The Black Cat” are generic characters, without defining characteristics, other than the fact that they are policeman. The policemen in both of the stories drive the action by showing up and investigating.
The men of both stories are probably languishing away in their various cells. The reader knows for sure that the “cat” narrator is there because he will be hanged the next day. The end of the “heart” story is not so clear. More than likely, he is sitting in his padded cell awaiting his next visit to the psychiatrist.
What similarities exist between "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
"The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" do have definite similarities. I like your idea about relating animals and animal-like characteristics to evil and homicide. One major similarity that you could use in correlation with your idea is that both stories feature an unreliable narrator and the theme of insanity.
Poe uses the unreliable narrator to force the reader into the uncomfortable role and perspective of a mad man. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator does relate animal characteristics to things through his maddened view. The narrator reveals his fear and loathing though his repeated use of the phrase "vulture eye" to describe the old man's eye. In this case, the unreliable narrator's fixation on an animal attribute led him to madness in homicide.
In "The Black Cat," interestingly enough, Pluto's damaged eye, caused by the hand of the unreliable narrator, also becomes the focus of his increasing madness. His guilt at having caused such a wound and his anger at the cat which he blames for having made him do it, coupled with the fact that the cat now avoided him drives the narrator into a fit of rage. Later, when the narrator gets a new black cat, it too is missing an eye. Coincidence?
Another similarity between the two is that both of the unreliable narrators choose to hide their victims within their home. The body of the old man is chopped up and hidden beneath the floor boards, and the wife is chopped up and concealed in the wall of the basement. Moreover, both corpses 'reveal' themselves through mysterious noises; the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" hears the beating of the heart, and in "The Black Cat," the narrator hears a horrible wail when he knocks on the wall for the police (which of course is the second Black Cat. The narrator had "walled the monster up in the tomb" (8).