Sally:
I’d like to compare The Black Cat with The Tell-Tale Heart. Both story give the reader a sense of horror. There are many bloody scene, such as the narrator dismembered the corpse in The Tell-Tale Heart and the narrator cut one of the cat’s eyes from it’s socket in The Black Cat. Both story build up a screwy personality of the character. The plots are so disgusting and deviant that I could hardly understand. But the scenes are so real and vivid and the descriptions are so detailed that I felt someone was just doing the crimes right in front of me.
In addition, both stories are using the first-person perspective. The language he use gave me the feeling that I am having a conversation face to face with the narrator. Especially in The Tell-Tale Heart, Allan wrote sentences like “but will you think that I am mad”. So those languages keep attracting the reader so I didn’t feel difficult catching the story while reading.
Also, the characteristic of the narrator are quite the same. Allan built up both character as a person with psychopath, violent, abnormal and spiteful. The man in The Tell-Tale Heart was afraid of a man’s eye and willing to get ride of it, and the man in The Black Cat was afraid of the white mark in front of the black cat and the “sprite” of Pluto. Both main character has something that threaten them deeply, and then both of them use an incredible way to solve their fear. Particularly, the man in TTTH was quite ordinary, he loved animals and his wife very much before. He explained his change as the result of alcohol. Whether or not his reason is true, both of them are screwy and twisty in personality.
