Characters From Poe's Stories example essay topic

Poe's writing does more than entertain the reader. It can be an insight into the dark and somber world of Edgar Allen Poe. One does not understand the meaning of Poe if it is read at the superficial level. He must read into Poe, and understand the hardships of his life and how he maintained them that way.

He knew that death was an inevitable part of life, it is the price of life, but he tried to fight it as if it was an unnatural part of life. This theme of hardships and death is carried throughout Poe's writings. Some of the most striking similarities can be found between "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", two short stories that divulge the inner workings of a perverse mind. First, The plot of these stories is similar in many ways.

"The Black Cat" is Poe's second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt (the first being "The Tell-Tale Heart"); however, this story does not deal with premeditated murder. The reader is told that the narrator appears to be a happily married man, who has always been exceedingly kind and gentle. He attributes his downfall to the "Fiend Intemperance" and "the spirit of perverseness". Perverseness, he believes, is. ".. one of the primitive impulses of the human heart."Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?" Perverseness provides the rationale for otherwise unjustifiable acts, such as killing the first cat or rapping with his cane upon the plastered-up wall behind which stood his wife's corpse. ".. already greatly decayed and clotted with gore". We might argue that what the narrator calls "perverseness" is actually conscience.

Guilt about his alcoholism seems to the narrator the "perverseness" which causes him to maim and kill the first cat. Guilt about those actions indirectly leads to the murder of his wife. The disclosure of the crime, as in "The Tell-Tale Heart", is caused by a warped sense of triumph and the conscience of the murderer. Likewise, the narrator thinks that he has made such an immaculate job in cleaning up the body that nobody will find him, but he never considers the "x-factor".

That is characteristic of someone that is extremely compulsive; they will act without thinking about the variables in the "equation". What makes this story different from "The Tell-Tale Heart" is that Poe has added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural. Now the story has an added twist as the narrator hopes that the reader, like himself, will be convinced that these events were not. ".. an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects". Characters from Poe's stories are also strikingly similar in some instances, and differing in others.

In the case of similarities, both of the main characters commit these heinous crimes out of some psychological confusion or perverseness. In "Heart", the narrator suffered from insanity and the obvious obsessive disorder. Suffering from intemperance of alcohol and the same obsessive disorder, the man from "The Black Cat" was otherwise good-natured. Denying his insanity, the narrator from "Heart" is very similar to the man in "The Black Cat", which denies his belief in the superstition of black cats. However, characters in these stories differ greatly when the narrator of "Heart" is considered by many to be a woman! This narrator may be male or female because Poe uses only "I" and "me" in reference to this character.

Most readers assume that the narrator is a male because of a male author using a first person point of view; however, this story can also be plausible when the deranged protagonist appears as a woman. Poe developed his own unique style that he used throughout his writing career. One of his traits is his use of symbolism, which can be found in both stories. Both stories involve a case of domestic violence that occurs as the result of an irrational fear. To the narrator in "Heart", that fear is represented by the old man's eye. The belief in the evil eye dates back to ancient times, and even today, is fairly common in India and the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

In "Cat", the focal point of the story, the black feline, symbolizes evil and witchery in many cultures. Appropriately, the narrator calls his cat, Pluto, who in Greek and Roman mythology was the god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld (symbolism). As in most Poe stories, biting and mutilation appear in both. Poe writes these stories from the perspective of the murderer. When an author creates a situation where the protagonist tells a personal account, the overall impact of the story is heightened.

With his extensive vocabulary, use of symbolism and foreshadowing, and similar moods used in both of the stories, "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" vary little in the author's style of writing. Edgar Allen Poe's stories all have similar motifs and composition that would suggest suppressed emotions from life experiences are being discharged through his writings. His plots, characters, and style remain constant through many of his stories. However, one can read each story leisurely and never notice the similarities or the relationship of his writings to his life. This is what makes Poe an extremely intriguing man from all viewpoints..