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

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Recommended: Edgar Allan Poe themes in his writing

Everyone is familiar with the adrenaline rush of terror, the terribly wonderful allure of thrillers, and the bone-chilling feeling of something crawling ever-so-slowly down their spine. Humans tend to seek out things that give them a friendly jolt of horror. That, in itself, could be why Poe’s works are so timeless. All that he did would contribute to his signature effect: macabre. Poe used dark subject matter, words with disturbing connotations, and insinuations of daftness in his characters to construct a deeply perturbing mood in his works, namely “The Raven,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It could be said that Poe used his own melancholy life experiences to fuel his somber subject material. Wherever Poe may have went, he could not outrun death, for those he held close all fell to their graves until he was almost completely abandoned. In similar fashion, the main characters of …show more content…

“The Tell-Tale Heart” constantly uses words such as “dreadful,” “haunting,” and “madness” to describe the terrible actions and mindset of the protagonist. He writes: “Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! Louder!” (Poe 4). He skillfully crafts panic and madness by using vocabulary and overall thoughts that reflect that state of mind. In “The Black Cat,” as well, he uses diction to disturb his audience. “The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!” (Poe 5). Constructing a picture that stains the minds of readers with fear, he wrote of terror and death and

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