Essay Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

447 Words2 Pages
The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart are both short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. These short stories are similar because they set the same theme, being the effects of a guilty conscience and the decent into madness. But in many ways, these stories are very different. In The Black Cat, the reader finds out what happens at the end of the story, while in The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator lets the reader know what will happen at the beginning of the story. The narrator’s anger in The Black Cat, is directed at the cat and his actions are made because of his anger and drinking problems. The narrator in The Tell Tale Heart’s anger is directed at the old man’s eye, but his actions are made because he claimed to have had a “disease”. Also, while the narrator in The Tell Tale Heart plans his murder of the old man, the narrator in The Black Cat killed his wife without forethought. The purpose of these two narrators telling their stories are also very different. The narrator in The Black Cat tells us his story to unburden his soul before he is executed, while the narrator in The Tell Tale Heart tells us his story to try and prove to the reader…show more content…
The narrators in each story face an internal conflict when they become haunted by their crimes. The protagonists of both stories are very alike because they both share their criminal history in flashbacks, disclosing their motives and confessing their crimes. They both try to defend their sanity, even though both narrators are obviously insane. In these stories both narrators commit a murder and are haunted by their own deviant actions. Both narrators are sure they have committed the perfect crime, but overconfidence and guilt catches both men, and the police end up finding the wife’s body and the old man’s body. Both stories use the cat and the beating heart to symbolize the guilt hat won’t be silenced in the men’s
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  • Essay Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

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    “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” are stories written by Edgar Allan Poe, both sharing the topic of murder and mental insanity. Both stories share in romanticism and characterization .At the opening the protagonists in both stories do not have much in common: Through a close read, one can see that they actually have a lot of similarities; However criminal flashbacks and confessing their motives. Each story starts off with the criminal flashbacks. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the protagonist

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