Edgar Allen Poe wrote many short stories in his life time, most of them circling around the themes of insanity, truth, and guilt. Two stories that explore these themes are Black Cat and Tell-Tale Heart (Poe "Black Cat"; Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"). Both main characters in the works have committed murder and both appear to be insane. However, both characters argue that they are of sound mind. In Black Cat (Poe "Black Cat"), the narrator is more aware of his insanity; while in The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"), the narrator is oblivious to his insanity. Guilt is another theme shown in both stories, however it is shown differently in both stories. The guilt is more obvious in The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"), while …show more content…
the narrator in the Black Cat (Poe "Black Cat") shows very little remorse for his actions. Additionally, both stories have an aspect of rationality or truth. The narrators try to use rationale and logic to explain their acts or events in their lives. Furthermore, both the narrators are unreliable, and the reader is left wondering what the truth is. Both stories touch on a major theme that we have discusses in class, truth and its relationship with emotion and reason. The major similarity between the Black Cat (Poe "Black Cat") and The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart") is the narrators’ insanity and unreliability. Within the first paragraph of The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator says, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” (Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” 193). He then explains his madness away by saying, “observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” 193). It is obvious from the first paragraph that the narrator is insane. Additionally, because the narrator believes he is of stable mind, the reader cannot know what is true and what isn’t. The narrator becomes unreliable because of his irrationality. We see this insanity in the Black Cat (Poe "Black Cat") as well. The narrator says, “my general temperament and character… experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others” (Poe “Black Cat” 231). In the Black Cat, the narrator is aware of his insanity and he blames it on alcohol. However, he still denies his madness. In the first paragraph he says, “Yet, mad am I not – and very surely do I not dream” (Poe “Black Cat” 230). He is aware of his change in nature, but he is blaming the events that transpire as mere “natural causes and effects” (Poe “Black Cat” 230). So, the narrator becomes unreliable, like in The Tell-Tale Hear (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"). While both narrators clearly display madness, they still use logic and reason to explain their actions and events.
The narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart uses reason to explain away his insanity (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"). He argues that a mad man could never have accomplished his feats with such caution and foresight. When the narrator is opening the old man’s door at midnight he says, “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! – would a madman have been so wise as this?” (Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” 193). Additionally, he describes how he took “wise precautions” to conceal the body (Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” 196). He chopped the old man up and hid him under the floor boards, as well as cathcing all the blood in a tub as he was dismembering the body. He describes putting the boards back “so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye – not even his – could have detected anything wrong” (Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” 196). The narrator uses logic to argue his sanity by explaining how careful and calm he was as he was murdering the old man. However, as the reader knows the narrator is mad, his rationale has no value. In the Black Cat, the narrator uses logic to explain events that happen to him. After a fire destroyed his house, an outline of a cat had appeared on the wall over his bed. He explains this event by saying, “[the cat] must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my …show more content…
chamber” (Poe “Black Cat” 233). He goes on to say that the image of the cat was left there by the smoke and “ammonia” after the cat had been thrown threw the window and at the wall (Poe “Black Cat” 233). The fact that the narrator, obviously deranged, still tries to use logic to explain an odd, supernatural event further portrays his insanity. He is oblivious to the fact that the image of the cat on his wall is in direct correlation to him killing it the night before. Additionally, the narrator also uses rationale to explain his “perverseness.” He blames it on the alcohol, as well as the “character of man” (Poe “Black Cat” 232). The irony that both narrators use rational and thoughtful thinking to explain their actions or events helps highlight both narrators’ insanity. Another common theme among these two works is guilt. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the reader is left to infer whether or not the narrator felt guilty. In the end of the story, the narrator confesses to the crime because he believes he can hear the old man’s heart. He believes the police men are making fun of him and know that he has killed the old man. The reader can interpret this as guilt for killing the old man or perhaps the narrator is tormented by the fact that the police officers were making fun of him. The unreliability of the narrator forces the reader to speculate whether or not the narrator was feeling guilty. In Black Cat, the narrator appears to feel guiltless about murdering his wife. However, in the first paragraph he says he must “unburthen my soul” (Poe “Black Cat” 230). He appears to be distraught about the events, but again the reader is left to guess whether or not it is guilt. The story ends after the police find his wife, so the reader cannot know if he feels remorse for murdering her. However, after the narrator gouges out the cat’s eye, he says he “experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse” (Poe “Black Cat” 231). This is the only point in the book that the narrator expresses true guilt for what he has done. Poe uses guilt in a lot of his stories. He shows how people cannot escape their guilt. While not shown in these two stories, the guilt people carry is external. Poe shows how the actions we choose to take must live with us forever and there is no escape from them. These two short stories shed light onto the topics discussed in class.
The Tell-Tale Heart and Black Cat both emphasize how the search for truth can be muddled by emotions and reason. In Wieland, emotions and reason both led Clara in the wrong direction in her search for the truth. The story emphasizes how even with emotions and reason, we may not know the truth (Brown). In The Tell-Tale Heart and Black Cat, both narrators are extremely emotional and in this case it makes them unreliable. Additionally, because of this unreliableness, the logic they use in their stories becomes unreliable as well. The reader is left to infer the truth from the
story. The stories The Tell-Tale Heart and Black Cat portray two unreliable narrators. The stories describe two men committing murder and both narrators explaining away their insanity with reason. Poe causes readers to read between the lines to gather the truth from both stories. Poe shows that the guilt we feel is inescapable and, in the end, it can cause our demise. Poe shows that emotions and reason can both lead us astray in our search for the truth.
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.
Every once in awhile, a case comes about in which the defendant confesses to a crime, but the defense tries to argue that at the time the defendant was not sane. This case is no different; the court knows the defendant is guilty the only aspect they are unsure about is the punishment this murderer should receive. The State is pushing for a jail sentence and strongly believes that the defendant was sane at the time of the murder. It is nearly impossible for the defense to prove their evidence burden of 51%. The State claims that the defendant was criminally responsible at the time of the murder. By using excessive exaggeration, premeditation and motive, the Prosecution will prove that the defendant knew exactly what he was doing and how wrong it was.
Hence, these two characters start to analyze their thoughts in a way where they become secluded from their state of mind and lose their sanity in the real world. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator realizes that he has no reason to kill the old man he lives with. He even starts to admit to having to love the man. He states, “There was no reason for what I did.
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".
Many people who have read “The Tell Tale Heart,” argue whether or not the narrator is sane or insane. Throughout this paper I have mentioned the main reasons for the narrator being sane. The narrator experienced guilt, he also was very wary executing the plan, and the intelligence level of his plan to murder the old
Poe's story demonstrates an inner conflict; the state of madness and emotional break-down that the subconscious can inflict upon one's self. In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the storyteller tells of his torment. He is tormented by an old man's Evil Eye. The storyteller had no ill will against the old man himself, even saying that he loved him, but the old man's pale blue, filmy eye made his blood run cold.
Tell-Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allan Poe, depicts the inner conflict of a murderer as he retells his story of how he came to kill the old man as a means to prove his sanity. The story is told in the point of view of an unreliable narrator, of whom is greatly disturbed by the eye of a geriatric man. The eye in question is described as evil, irritating the narrator beyond his comprehension, to the point when he has no choice but to get rid of the vexation by destroying the eye. This short story is similar to The Black Cat, of which is also penned by Poe. In The Black Cat, the narrator, albeit unreliable, describes his wrongdoings to the reader. He tells his story of how he murdered his wife, killed one of the two cats, and trapped the other
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator attempts to assert his sanity while describing a murder he carefully planned and executed. Despite his claims that he is not mad, it is very obvious that his actions are a result of his mental disorder. Hollie Pritchard writes in her article, “it has been suggested that it is not the idea but the form of his madness that is of importance to the story” (144). There is evidence in the text to support that the narrator suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was experiencing the active phase of said disease when the murder happened. The narrator’s actions in “The Tell-Tale Heart” are a result of him succumbing to his paranoid schizophrenia.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the single effect was the most important aspect of a short story, which everything must contribute to this effect. Poe’s gothic tale “The Black Cat” was written trying to achieve an effect of shocking insanity. In this first person narrative the narrator tells of his decline from sanity to madness, all because of an obsession with two (or possibly one) black cats. These ebony creatures finally drive him to take the life his wife, whose death he unsuccessfully tries to conceal.
Edgar Allen Poe’s a genius of innovation. He uses the ideas that were common concerns of the time to revolve around in his short stories. Edgar Allen Poe grew up in a rough time when both his parents died, 1811. At a young age Poe was placed with a foster family in which he was treated without any respect. He took the ideas of mental illness to a sophisticated example in his short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” “The Tell Tale Heart” is written in the gothic style that helps establish the surreal theme. Poe’s whole purpose in writing short story is to address the idea of mental illness which he portrays in his main character. Through his writing of the short story “A Tell Tale Heart” he addresses the idea that criminals were getting away with the idea pf insanity as there escape.
In the first lines of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the reader can tell that narrator is crazy, however the narrator claims the he is not crazy and is very much sane, because how could a crazy person come up with such a good plan. “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observer how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story,” (Poe 74). The reader can see from this quote that narrator is claiming that he is not insane because he can tell anyone what happened without having a mental breakdown or any other problems that people associate with crazy people. This is the begging of the unreliability of the narrator. Here the reader is merely questioning the amount of details. The narrator then goes on to explain how he didn’t hate the old man but he hated his eye.
A common theme that is seen throughout many of Edgar Allan Poe’s text, is madness. Madness that will make the whole world turn upside down and around again. Madness that takes over somebody’s life. Madness and eye imagery is present in both “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart” by Poe where madness is at first a fairy tale but then ends with a crash back to reality.Both stories share components of murder and insanity, and are very similar, not at first glance but if looked at more closely.
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying and grotesque. “The Black Cat is one of the most powerful of Poe’s stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust” (Quinn).
The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man's eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed 'perfect'; crime. People tend to think that insane persons are beyond the normal realm of reason shared by those who are in their right mind. This is not so; guilt is an emotion shared by all humans. The most demented individuals are not above the feeling of guilt and the havoc it causes to the psyche. Poe's use of setting, character, and language reveal that even an insane person feels guilt. Therein lies the theme to The Tell Tale Heart: The emotion of guilt easily, if not eventually, crashes through the seemingly unbreakable walls of insanity.