Comparing Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart And The Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe used many similar plot lines and themes throughout each one of his works. Two tales in particular share many of the same traits, both of them equally as disturbing. Those tales are “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”.
Beginning with “The Black Cat”, a once tolerant, warm-hearted man drinks himself into a bitter and disagreeable nature, altering himself as a person completely. This leads to his downfall where he begins to maltreat his once beloved wife and animals, ending in both the demise of his partner and favorite pet cat. The narrator of this tale, although in a constant drunken haze, still speaks fluently and reasonably while explaining the events that lead up to his own quietus. In time, the alcohol drives him

to cut out one of his dearest pet’s eyes. This pet is his black cat, Pluto, hence the title “The Black Cat”. Not long after that, he hangs the animal to death and ultimately ends up killing his wife with an axe. The narrator describes how he walls her dead body up in the cellar, confident that no one will find her. That is, until the police come looking for his wife and he gives himself away by knocking on the wall that is storing his deceased lover. The new cat that the man had obtained not long before, is stuck behind the wall with the dead body and his screeching meow, caused by the knocking, startles the police into knocking the wall down to reveal the hidden horror.
While there are fewer events leading up to the terrifying climax in “The Tell Tale Heart”, the impact of the final events are just as scarring.

In the Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator of the story is the roommate of an old man with an odd, blue eye. The eye is described as vulture-like and based on the chain of events that occur in the story, we can infer that the old man is also blind. In the beginning of the story the narrator claims that he actually loves the old man, but in due course, ends up killing him. Every night the narrator slowly opens the old man’s door, staring at him and his terrible vulture eye while he sleeps unaware, up until the night the narrator is caught. The old man sits up, a terrified look on his face as he asks, “Who’s there?”. The narrator surges toward his roommate and strangles him with his own bed sheets. Directly after killing him, the narrator’s first concern is how he is going to hide the body. He quickly decides to hide him in the floorboards of the very room he killed him in. The tale ends as the narrator gives himself up to the police by ripping up the floorboards in a manic

frenzy.
The first similarity that can be found between the two tales, is the fact that both narrators experience an inconsistency in their mental stability that also comes with moments of complete rationality. This is apparent in the way both narrators describe their feelings and the events that cause these feelings. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator says, “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money.” (Poe, 19)
This shows that the narrator knows that killing the old man was a pointless thing to do, and that it was wrong as well.

However, he still did it anyway, even despite loving the old man. In “The Black Cat”, the narrator is also conscious of the fact that the way he acts is unreasonable and wrong, but he continues to do it. For example, in “The Black Cat”, the narrator begins talking about the way he has and will treat his pets and wife, proving that he has a conscious but chooses to ignore it. “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye.” (Poe, 5-1)
The last, and finally most significant, piece of evidence that shows relation between the stories is the way the narrator’s both dispose of the dead bodies. Both narrators board up/close up the bodies as a form of disposing of them. However, one difference that comes along with that is the manner in which both narrators handle the dead body being in such close proximity The man from “The Black Cat” is much more composed and confident about his work, while the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart” is not and gives himself away because he is too on edge.
To conclude, Poe had fairly alike themes and plots, even story lines, for each one of his stories, uniting his work together as a whole almost and only benefitting his writing styles and

aesthetic.