Perverseness in Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart and Black Cat

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3 (A), Ruhr-University of Bochum (English Faculty), language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with Edgar Allan Poe´s short stories 'The Black Cat' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart', which are both examples of men who give in to a strange inner force which Poe himself calls 'perverseness'. His notion of this term is explicitly used in what could be called his 'short-story-essay': 'The Imp of the Perverse'. First of all it is neccessary to explain what Poe meant by this certain force, apart and beyond the ordinary understanding of 'perverseness'. After that his two tales of terror mentioned above will be compared according to their common themes. First a short summary of each will be given, followed by the point-of-view-technique Poe uses for a certain purpose. Then the victims of the stories and the narrators´ causes of fear will be explored. Both tales obviously deal with the causes of domestic violence that occur as the result of an irrational fear (either superstition or ancient belief). Then both protagonists will be characterized as perverse criminals who give in to their dark side and annihilate themselves. Furthermore there´s a discussion of narrative style and images and the ending of the stories. At last especially 'The Black Cat' is explored considering its content of truth. So the reader may see that Poe gave us two little masterpieces in human psychology to think about: The 'spirit of perverseness' is lurking in everybody...