Edgar Allan Poe

Although I have read "The Tell-Tale Heart" before, this past reading of it stood out significantly in my mind. I had never noticed how immediately the reader is introduced to the narrator's insanity. The first few lines of the story make the reader question the madness of the narrator. Poe does not ease the reader into the deranged mind of the narrator. However, in "The Black Cat", Poe introduces the protagonist as one who is constantly remarked by his "humanity", which we later find to not be evident in his murderous near future. There seems to be a point in both of these story that raises the question of when is sanity lost. In the narrator of "The Black Cat" we see him slowly loose his mind but in "The Tell-Tale Heart" the reader is left to wonder when and how his mind was lost. We are given the hint that he has some disease which has "sharpened" senses. Similarly, the man from "The Black Cat" is inflicted with the disease of alcoholism. This is what triggers his madness as we see him tear out his cat's eye during a drunken rage. In this, we see that sanity is as fragile as our own physical health and is just as susceptible to grotesque and violent disease.