Edgar Allen Poe is famous for writing some of the creepiest and most terrifying stories out there. In my English 9 class we have read: “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” All of these were very good stories, and all had an eerie feeling to them. However one of the stories is more creepy and disturbing than the rest of them. That story is “The Black Cat.” It is one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. Here are a few reasons why it takes the title as the scariest short story. The first reason is because of what the main character does in the story. In the beginning of the story the narrator (no name is mentioned) explains what he was remembered for in his younger years. He states that he was remembered for his gentleness and his kindness. He …show more content…
Not only is he in prison he is on death row. So we know that he got caught after he murdered his wife. The day after he killed his wife he decided that it would be best to hide the body in the fireplace in the basement. The fireplace had not been finished so there was still a hole for the body to be held in. So he picked up his dead wife corpse put it in the fireplace and sealed it up. In the end he was proud of his work and felt no regret what so ever. One day the police came by to check on the man. People said that they had not seen him of his wife in days. The narrator confirmed that he was ok and wanted to show the men around his house. When they got to the basement the narrator mentioned how nice of a job he had done on the fireplace. When the three men were talking out of nowhere they heard the meow of a cat. The policemen got suspicious and broke down the fireplace. What they found inside was the corpse of the man’s wife and the cat. The man didn’t know where the cat had gone after he killed his wife. He assumed that the killing of the wife scared it off. In the end the cat got revenge for both the wife and
In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is extremely uncanny due to the reader’s inability to trust him. Right from the beggining the reader can tell that the narrator is crazy although the narrator does proclaim that he is sane. Since a person cannot trust a crazy person, the narrator himself is unreliable and therefore uncanny. Also as the story progress the narrator falls deeper and deeper into lunacy making him more and more unreliable, until the end of the story where the narrator gives in to his insanity, and the reader loses all ability to believe him.
Another extraordinary tale by Edgar Allen Poe is, “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” recounts the story of an unnamed narrator with a selfless character. Loving animals, he and his wife have several pets, one of which being a black cat. The narrator and the cat grow very close and life for the narrator seems complete, until he beings drinking. Intoxicated by alcohol, the narrator becomes irritable and abusive. One day, that narrator, infur...
When a person becomes fascinated with a certain object or thing, their attention is irresistibly drawn towards it. They become enticed and overly interested in the object, trying to study it more, in hopes of learning and gather more information from it. However, when this fascination violently preoccupies every second of our time then it is no longer just a captivating interest but now an obsession. When someone is obsessed with something they are devoted and completely infatuated with the idea of that object, becoming powerless to resist the temptation that the object compels over them. It becomes an aggressive fixation and in some cases they may even lose themselves or their own sanity in the process. This idea that obsession leads to insanity is furthermore explored in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” in which the narrator becomes so enthralled with the eye of his old neighbor, that when he kills his neighbor in attempts to get rid of the eye, he cannot keep himself together and reveals to the authorities his secret, which in turn can be assumed to result in the narrator’s own death. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Poe uses great symbolism and a distinct style to reveal that obsession ultimately leads to insanity.
Edgar Allen Poe was an author during the 1800’s who wrote many short Gothic literature stories during his time. Poe’s stories usually consisted of death, revenge, and horror, which is the true essence of what Gothic literature is. “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are two of his many gothic short stories. These stories both have death and horror to them, but there are differences that make these two stories special in their own way. The stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are both similar and different in setting, plot, background, and characters.
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
Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.
The two short stories that I have chosen by Edgar Allan Poe are The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat. These two stories in particular have many things in common as far as technique goes, but they do have some significant differences between the two. In this paper I will try to compare and contrast these two short stories and hopefully bring something to the readers attention that wasn't there at first.
As he was killing the old man, the narrator claims that he could hear the man’s heart beating very loudly. After the narrator kills the old man, he chops him up into pieces and hides the pieces beneath the floorboards. The police arrive the next day after a neighbor reported hearing screams. When the police arrive, the narrator invites them in and invites them to search his home. He remains calm and he even invites the men into the old man’s bedroom.
Essay #2 A Psychoanalytical Critique of “The Tell-Tale Heart” “Paranoid Schizophrenia is a subtype of schizophrenia in which the patient has delusions (false beliefs) that a person or some individuals are plotting against them or members of their family” (Nordqvist). In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”, published in 1843 one of the most common responses a reader will experience is that the first person narrator is suffering from some sort of madness. After observing and analyzing many of the symptoms the narrator presents throughout the story one of the more common diagnoses’ placed on the narrator would be that of paranoid schizophrenia.