The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

1. Characters

   • Unnamed narrator
     • The narrator is another of Poe's unnamed and untrustworthy men driven mad. All we really know about him - if his word can be trusted, that is - is that he has enjoyed a lifelong love of animals and that animals have reciprocated this love.
   • The Narrator's Wife
     • The novel does not provide much information about the narrator's wife other than that she shares an immense love for animals.
   • Plutón
     • It is the black cat that joins the goldfish, the rabbit, the dog, the birds and the monkey in the collection of pets that the narrator and the wife have in their little domestic house when they get married.
   • Police
     • This arrives to investigate the disappearance of the narrator's wife and fulfill the function of the plot of needing someone for the person who believes he has committed the perfect murder to brag about.

2. Below we list the main works:

   • The Tell-Tale Heart:
     • It alludes to an anonymous narrator obsessed with the diseased eye, whom Poe calls the vulture eye in the story, of an old man with whom he lives; he finally decides to assassinate him. The crime is rigorously studied and the body is torn to pieces and hidden under the floorboards of the house.
   • The black cat:
     • It is considered the most sinister tale of Poe, it combines elements of horror and psychology, it seems to lead to the expression of psychological terror; Its publication was on August 19, 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post newspaper in Philadelphia, USA.
       • The story focuses on a young married couple, who lead a quiet life with their pets until the husband begins to have problems with alcohol.
   • The Gold Bug:
     • Decipher a coded scroll found by chance on a beach, it contains instructions for unearthing the treasure of an ancient pirate.
   • The plague king:
     • It is a fantastic story that tells through humor a night of terror, taking daily cases of the Plague epidemics. It was published in September 1835 in the Southern Literary newspaper.
   • The Masque of the Red Death:
     • This story was published in 1842, the story tells some traditions of the Gothic narrative and is analyzed in an allegory about death. For the red death the blood was his avatar, his seal the color red.

3. Gender.

   • Horror novel.

4. The Black Cat

   • • The narrator has questionable sanity. He is a murderer who is tormented by his own mind and angry feelings. He is a totally unhinged character who feels no remorse or guilt at his cruel acts. He justifies his actions and tries to persuade the reader to feel identified, since he always seeks to justify every heinous act.
   • • She is a woman who likes animals very much and is capable of adopting from the street, being attentive to their care. She came to risk her own life to save the life of the cat that her husband who was blinded by her anger wanted to kill. We can analyze that the narrator's wife was a noble and submissive woman who allowed him to come home late drunk with wine. There is a popular saying that the one who laughs last laughs better in this case we can say it the one who meows last the best because thanks to the noise made by the cat the policemen discovered the corpse of that woman.
   • • It was a beautiful animal, black in color and unusually large in size. He followed his owner everywhere and although he was the only one of the pets who did not notice the change in his master, he constantly avoided it. One night when he loved her he crossed the door when he saw that Pluto was avoiding him, he took out a knife and cut one of his eyes. Obviously he lost his eye and although he recovered quickly he fled from his master all the time for fear that he would hurt him. He finally passed away when the master of him tied a rope around his neck and hung it on one of the wooden beams. The cat was found by the police on the head of the corpse of its owner's wife, with its only eye full of fire, its mouth open the color of blood, sitting and screaming for having carried out his revenge.

5. Edgar Allan Poe

   • He was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, United States, he was a writer, poet, critic and romantic journalist known as one of the masters of the short story, he was a renovator of the Gothic novel He was a renovator of the Gothic novel, especially remembered for his tales of terror He died on October 7, 1849, in the city of Baltimore, when he was barely forty years old (Garcia, 2017).

6. Thematic.

   • Terror and mystery. Because of the attitudes that the man had in front of Pluto and he does not know why he did it, for that reason he later repents. At the end, a mystery is also posed when the cry of the cat that the protagonist thought had died is heard and comes out from behind the mural.

7. Characteristics

   • The protogonist loves animals. He claims that in his childhood he had a natural goodness. He mentions the changing love of man. He shared with his wife the pleasure of having several pets. The character of the protagonist became aggressive and that change was noticeable. He justifies his violent impulse just because this action is wrong and takes him away from the love of God. He recognizes that his actions were evil until he thought that the event of the fire was revenge for Pluto. With his wife he adopts another cat because he reminded him of Pluto. He committed murder because his wife intervened in saving the cat.

8. Subgenre.

   • Gothic story and narrative.

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