Escape Guilt In The Tell Tale Heart

No one can escape guilt. Even if they’ve done a crime many times that it’s become a chore. They can never escape guilt. This theme is shown in "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and in “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe. At the beginning of “The Black Cat”, the narrator comes across a black cat that he comes to really like. Unfortunately, the narrator gets drunk and angry, then the narrator kills the cat after it bites him. Feeling guilty, the narrator finds another cat and tries to care for this one. In a failed attempt at killing the next cat, he ends up killing his wife and stuffing the body behind a wall. Later when the police search the house, the narrator can’t help but hear the meow coming from inside the wall. The police open the wall and find the cat lying beside the dead body. The

The reader can infer that the old man’s heartbeat leads them to the theme because on page 66, it said,“...for the heart was beating so loudly that [the narrator] was sure someone must hear” (Heart 66). This evidence shows the fact that you cannot escape guilt because the old man’s heart is a symbol of the narrator’s guilt of his actions. The narrator also states the fact that he cannot help but hear his “heart” beating. His guilt has also driven him crazy to the point that anything making a ticking sound would make him think that it’s a heartbeat. This is true because in the short story it states “It was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall, a sound [the narrator] knew well,” (Heart 67). This evidence is telling you about a sound that the narrator is hearing. This sound is like a clock and he thinks that it is the old man’s heart. This shows guilt because everybody else knows that it is just the clock, but the narrator thinks it’s the old man’s heart. He thinks that because he feels guilty of what he