The use of an unreliable, villainous storyteller was not a typical Gothic feature at the time but it has greatly influenced future authors who write in the Gothic style. In both tales the narrators give off an intensely nervous energy by using repetition and strong, unruly lexis. The first line of The Tell-Tale Heart sets the tone for the whole story instantly “TRUE!-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I a mad?” The dashes break up the sentences making them erratic; this is helped by the uneven sentence structure and the fusion of long and short clauses to make the whole pace of the story jerky and uneven.
A typical Gothic feature that appears in only The Tell Tale Heart and not The Black Cat is the use of the night. The narrator describes how “…that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.” Also the murder itself was committed at night and the use of the disguise of darkness gives an eerie feel to the piece and emphasis the Gothic tone of the story.
However in The Black Cat the story was described through the day and the night and the murders of both the narrator’s wife and cat were during the day. Although this was not traditionally Gothic, and the description of the gruesome death caused some sections of the story to be more in the genre of horror.
An element of Gothic literature that was in The Black Cat and not The Tell Tale Heart was the use of “omens”, obviously the title itself was a bad omen at the time and the other story had no omens, other than the heart beat motif that causes the narrator to confess his sins to the police. The title itself was not the only omen used in The Black Cat; Poe writes about two other obvious omens in this tale. Firstly the large imprint of “the figure of a gigantic cat...There was a rope about the animal’s neck”, this was left on the wall the night after our narrator had killed his cat, this is not a figment of his imagination though as other people around can see it; later on however the narrator describes a mark of white hair, which shows “the image of a hideous –of a ghastly thing –of the GALLOWS!” This is more likely to be an illusion as the remorse builds up inside him. But he describes it as “…terrible engine of Horror and of Crime –of Agony and of Death!” The lexis used here is full of anger and is very strong. The capitalisation of the more significantly brutal words personifies these aspects and emphasises the narrator’s fear of the cat and of guilt.
Poe uses many different techniques to suck the reader into the mind of his narrators. For example in the The Tell Tale Heart he describes his “disease” to the reader and excuses his actions. “The disease has sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.” This line shows how the narrator is quite openely conceited. His insanity is revealed to us in a number of ways, firstly the deadpan tone of many parts of the passage give the reader an eery feeling of calm, that causes a disturbing sensation, such as when the narrator is describing his method of concealing his victim’s corpse, “I took up three planks…deposited all…then replaced the boards…” This use of everyday lexis “deposited” almost makes us forget that he is talking about a corpse, it makes the whole procedure sound mundane, which gives the impression of madness but also numbness to the narrator.
Secondly, his lunacy is exposed to us as the character of the narrator is unravelled through the story. Throughout, hints are dropped as to the overconfidence of our narrator, repetition of various phrases. “…what had I now to fear?” and then again when the officers arrived, “for what had I to fear?” This reiteration of egotism makes us feel as if the narrator is reassuring himself that he is confident, and suggests to the reader that he has inexplicable insecurities lying beneath his cool exterior.
Also in The Tell Tale Heart Poe uses many capitalised words and short, broken phrases to speed up the pace of parts of the account. “They heard! -- they suspected! -- they KNEW!” This shows how truly nervous and petrified the narrator is, and with the staggered, gaunt sentence structure makes the reader feel the same way, even if not to the same extent.
A way in which The Black Cat’s method of pulling the reader into the mindset of a murderous narrator is near the beginning we are given some background about the narrator’s life. In The Tell Tale Heart we were given no information about setting or circumstance to help us detail our image. I find that this helps more as we have more pictures painted to us and these can then feed our imagination to produce a far more complex, but realistic understanding of the narrator’s mental situation. “I was especially fond of animals,” This line is quite ironic, as we learn from the rest of the story he seems to, infact, have a severe problem with cats.
The way in which Poe implies the insanity of the narrator is in the language used to describe his cats. “…sagacious to an astnoishing degree” His strange attachment to the cat gave the narrator an untrustworthy and evil feel. Then when he describes his motives for hanging his first cat, Pluto, this insinuates utter, pschotic madness, “the spirit of PERVERSENESS…have we not a perpetual inclination…to violate that which is Law” This strange, confused motive gives the narrator a trace of humanity, but more of a childlike malevolence which emitts an air of wickedness. This infantile but wicked narrator, I find, is more chilling than the more simple, insane and evil narrator in The Tell Tale Heart, because of its uncanny likeness to reality.
A similarity between The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart is that both narrators have a sense of superiority about them and this strong impression of narcissism makes the reader feel overwhelmed by malice and also builds up a strong feeling of resentment to their disagreeable characters. In both stories, the narrators end with a confession to their terrible deeds, both obviously caused by insolence and bravado.
Another feature that is in The Black Cat but not The Tell Tale Heart is the sense of paranoia given off by the narrator, about the mark of white hair on his second cat’s chest, “…the mark…of which I have spoken…assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline…the image of a hideous- of a ghastly thing – of the GALLOWS!” This paranoia of an omen about the sadistic murder of Pluto blatently lays out the narrator’s madness and causes the reader to feel possibly more sympathetic, but more likely, to feel more estranged from the narrator.
In conclusion I found the ways in which we were drawn into the psychotic mind of our killers were more effective in The Black Cat, as some were more subtle, but the more obvious one’s were easier to spot and gave a more definite and outlined picture of the narrator’s psyche. However, I found that the typical Gothic features used in The Tell Tale Heart made it more Gothic than in The Black Cat and also made the tale more chilling, even if not as gruesome or detailed as The Black Cat.
