Edgar Allen Poe Complete Tales and Poems

There are two poems for our class in particular that caught my attention and didn’t let go. The “Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat” had me on the edge of my seat and that was simply because both of them were twisted and thrilling much like a suspense show you would see on TV. The “Cask of Amontillado” was interesting because it was a revenge story that ended up working out really well for the narrator. Sometimes revenge can be a two headed snake which afflicts harm on both parties, but this story seemed to only harm Fortunado to character that gets trapped in the end. The narrator has a well thought out plan and performs it perfectly and in a very evil way. The twisted part of this story that had me very interested in how it would all end is the fact that the narrator just enclosed Fortunado alive and left him there. It was not a happy ending as you might expect from Poe’s writing because Fortunado had never been discovered even fifty years later.

Now for “The Black Cat,” this story seemed like it was straight out of a horror movie. The narrator is most definitely crazy and the reader gets an idea of that right from the start, considering he is telling the story the day before his death penalty. When the narrator explains how he wants to tell his story and set the record straight, I was expecting a story of how he was innocent, but as the narrator tells the story, he seems more and more insane. One insane deed led to the next with the narrator which starts with him getting drunk and cutting one of his cat’s eyes out, which he follows up with hanging the cat and killing it. The suspense enters the story when he finds an impression of the hung cat on a wall. Things only get weirder with this story because he finds another black cat with a white spot on it that ends up turning into the form of the GALLOWS! The narrator goes crazy and tries to kill the cat, but ends up killing his wife with no remorse at all. The cat though, ends up leading to the narrator’s demise and gives him away to the police by making noise in the spot where the narrator hid his wife’s body and the cat. This narrator has major issues in this story and his explanation of how he ended up where he is ends up being very dark and of an evil nature. Both these stories were filled with suspense which made it easy to get hooked on them from start to finish.