Thursday, April 3, 2008
That Darn Cat
He almost got away with it! There are many similar themes between The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat, one being the fact that the murders are found out by what are seemingly other sources than themselves. I just wanted to pose the idea that in The Black Cat, that maybe it wasn't the cat screaming from inside the "tomb" that gave away the crazy man, but it was in fact he himeself by even opeing his mouth when the detectives were getting ready to leave the house. If he had not said anything he would have been cleared. Does the two tales portray the concept that an act of the perverse will come back to haunt you because your guilt is so vast after committing it?
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5 comments:
Corinne,
I do agree that the narrator in "The Black Cat" drew attention to the "tomb" when he commented on the structure of his house. It also seems like the narrator places the blame on the cat for giving him away, whereas in "The Tell-tale Heart" the narrator just comes and confesses. You can see that the beating of the heart drives him to confess, but it doesn't function as a way of giving him up to the detectives.
When I first read this story I assumed the cat did make the sounds from inside the tomb, but after reading your post I questioned it. I think there is definately a possibility that the cat wasn't really screaming- that the guilt got to him. The narrator admits that he has a "disease", which I understand to be severe alcoholism, so that makes him unreliable anyway. Poe's decriptions of the sounds from inside the tomb, do not seem like ones a cat would make: "a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continious scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman- a howl- a wailing shriek, half of terror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation" (606). Maybe the "throat of the damned" describes narrator. I have had my cat for a long time, and she has never, nor can I imagine, her making any sounds close to that, especially of a child crying.
I see what you're saying. I feel that both the beating heart and the screaming cat can be looked at as symbolistic of the conscience we all share...and that if you ignore it, it becomes louder and louder until you can't anymore.
I definitely agree with the idea that the narrator gives himself away and not the cat in "The Black Cat" or the beating heart in "The Tell-Tale Heart." I think it is important to note a specific idea that the narrator of each tale ponders upon. The notion is the state of being mad.
In "The Black Cat," the narrator states, "Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not..." (597) And in "The Tell-Tale Heart" a similar excerpt can be seen. The narrator states, "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing." (555) and again states, "If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body." (558)
In each of these stories the narrator first admits that the reader view him as a madman. Following these statements they reject the notion. The fact that the narrator of each story gives them self away at the conclusion of the story does signify the truth that they are, indeed, mad. It's not the act of killing that proves the narrator mad, but the latter actions that officially give rise to their madness. The beating heart and the howling of the cat symbolize the overall madness in which each narrator possess.
At first, I read the story literally and thought the cat had made the sound. I have heard cats sounding like babies crying, but not an "inhumane howl" as the narrator tells. "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" seem to be focused on the inability of the narrators to live with the guilt of their actions. I don't agree that this makes them "mad". I think it makes them quite sane. If they were "mad", then the ability to be persecuted by their acts would not cause them to desire being discovered. Both narrators would and could have gone on with their lives and no one would have figured out the crime. Yet it was their sanity that caused them to confess to the murders. In "The tell-Tale Heart", the narrator pulls chairs into the old man's room for the police to sit and talk. At first glance, it seems boastful, yet it is his heart that is beating, that causes him to confess. In "The Black Cat", the narrator gives clues to the police about the "sturdiness" of the house. Could the scream he heard be his own voice confessing?
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