Edgar Allan Poe Project

The Black Cat

Theme

“ I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. There was a rope about the animal's neck.”

“I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket.”

Edgar Allan Poe used madness in his stories because everyone goes crazy sometimes,most people can relate,and it may describe how he feels/what he is going through.

“By some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.”

Edgar Allan Poe Project:

Madness

By: Angelina Doak, Aubrey Gurganus, and Aaliyah Hannah

Tell-Tale Heart

“And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.”

"The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone."

“And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.”

“If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.”

The Pit and the Pendulum

"How long it lasted of course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the objects around

me were visible. By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison. In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed."(15-16)

"The odour of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed – I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare bauble."(23)

"Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw.

At length it forced – it wrestled its way into my soul – it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to speak! – oh, horror! – oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands – weeping bitterly." (36)