Similarities Between The Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat

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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. In “The Black Cat”, the main character is consumed so much by his madness, which grows more and more as the story goes on and eventually ends with him being put in jail for murder of his wife. The madness first starts when his love for his black cat, Pluto,turns to utter hatred. He stabs out the …show more content…

He brutally describes him stabbing the cats eye, "I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket"(p5) Pluto’s perspective of his master went from loving to fear and recognizing cruelty, experiencing both a literal and physiological change of vision. From then on Pluto sees his master differently, and sees the world differently as well in result of his now one eye. Additionally, the reader's eyes for his cat are sharpened and changed at this moment as well. The madness in the Black Cat then escalates when the narrator's hatred for Pluto consumed him, and he hangs him outside the garden.Mysteriously, when coming home drunk a few weeks after the murder of his cat, a black cat similar to Pluto appears in front of the narrator, missing an eye as well but has white fur on its stomach unlike Pluto. He brings the cat home in hope it will replace the cat he now misses and remorses for killing. Soon his liking for his cat turned to bitterness and hatred. The madness inside of him decreased with the death of Pluto, and returned with

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