Tuesday, November 13, 2012

In "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat", what was the effect of the crime on the murderers?

The initial effect on the murderers is relief to be free from their tormentors.  In "The Tell-Tale Heart", after he murders the old man, he relays his relief:  "His eye would trouble me no more."  In "The Black Cat", he says, "My happiness was supreme!".  This relief soons turns to cocky egotism at the cleverness of their crime, at their assurance of having covered it so well, they would never be caught.  In "The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator leads the cops into the room of the murder, and "in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim."  In "The Black Cat", the narrator brags to the cops about how well the walls in his house are built, and "through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom."

The effect of this bravado and egotism in "The Black Cat" leads to the discovery of the murder.  In "The Tell-Tale Heart" it is the narrator's own hallucinatory guilt that reveals his evil deed.  Up to that point though, the after-effects of their crimes are remarkably similar.

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