Compare and contrast The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat

Zoë Molyneux

Compare and contrast “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet and writer who is regarded as a master of the macabre, focusing on the horror genre with themes of death and insanity being explored throughout his work. Many traits of his main characters, such as the alcohol abuse of the protagonist in The Black Cat are borrowed from his own experiences, with the demons of drugs and alcohol eventually driving Poe to his death. His stories in general share the social setting of his own life, which was east-coast America in the mid-1800s, when at the time the distinct stoicism of the Victorian era was prevalent and insanity was a taboo subject – people who displayed an unstable state of mind were locked away and treated as outcasts. The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat have many similarities, including these two men who throughtout their stories attempt to rationalise their respective downfalls , but instead show how terribly insane they are, letting the reader make their own observation of their mental disintegration.

The murders in both stories have several similarities as well as differences. Firstly, both men dissect the murders and explain rationally the precision with which they went about killing their victims in an attempt to seem as sane as possible. In The Tell-Tale Heart, this is the narrator says, “You should have seen how wisely I preceded – with what caution – with what foresight – with what dissimulation I went to work!” while in The Black Cat he says “I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body”. Their sense of detachment actually lets the reader see how mentally damaged these individuals are.

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Another similarity is that when questioned by the police about the murders, the over-confidence of both men leads to their downfall. In The Tell-Tale Heart, we see the narrator describe his change from perfectly comfortable to extremely nervous as the supposedly “beating heart” haunts him. He says “Yet the sound increased – a low, dull, muffled sound - much such a sound a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” which references how he described the mans heartbeat as he killed him. Perhaps this was his own heartbeat, because the old man was obviously lifeless, and we were told at the start of the story how “dreadfully nervous” the narrator was. His nervousness caused him to come forward as the perpetrator because he could not handle the emotional challenge of concealing the body. In The Black Cat, it was by accident that the body was revealed to the police. The main character remarks, “this is a very well-constructed house”, while rapping on the wall with a cane, causing the bricks to fall away. Right up until the revealing of the body, this man displays a stable state of mind to all around him. Neither man displays any remorse for the killings.

The difference between the two murders is that in The Tell-Tale Heart, the murder does not come as a surprise. We are prepared from the start for what is going to happen, as he says “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever”. Poe’s mastery is seen here as he builds up tension; the pace of the story is extremely slow – he terrorises the old man for seven nights before the murder. A reader’s enjoyment of the story rests on the descriptions of how this man’s mind progresses, because he is extremely worrying as well as engaging. On the contrary, the murder in The Black Cat comes as a complete surprise. Just as his wife is simply accompanying him to the cellar, he is driven into a fit of rage and aims a blow at the cat. “But the blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe into her brain”. Rather than being horrified at the murder, a reader is taken by surprise and shocked at the ease of which the narrator changed his state of mind. This further outlines just how insane this man was.

The motives that the men share for perpetrating these murders are similar. While the man in The Tell-Tale Heart had a psychotic obsession with his victim’s eye – “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it” – the protagonist of The Black Cat has an obsession with his pet. However, we get the sense that, while the first man has always been particularly unstable and nervous, the second has not revealed these signs until he began drinking, after which his cat began to ignore him. We are told of his docility and love of animals at the start – “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition” – so this helps us to deduce that the cat brought out the more menacing side of his personality. This is either because he feels rejected by the cat, or something more sinister, which Poe reveals at the end. He says, “Upon [the dead cat’s head] was the red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder”. This shows how unstable he has become, as he, more than believing, actually sees a cat that he believes was actually a witch (a commonly held superstition at the time).

There are basic similarities between both narrators displayed in these stories. We sense that both men deeply loved their victims, and I think Poe makes this clear to make the crimes they have committed seem more irrational. They murdered because of their mental damage and while are not remorseful for the killings, they may have regretted that their victims had to die because of their obsessions. In The Tell-Tale Heart the corpse is dismembered, and while this is not done in The Black Cat, we can compare the methodical way in which the men go about the murders. Also, in both of the stories, the narrators reflect on their deterioration after it has happened. This allows them to comment on what happened with hindsight, and therefore we have a unique viewpoint of what happened. The two stories are both told in first person, which is necessary to gain a better idea of both men’s characters.

The language Poe uses in both stories is extremely successful in creating the two characters and setting the scenes for the murders.