Edgar All Poe's Style
Edgar Allen Poe’s style in The Black Cat and Tell-Tale Heart In many of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, a reader can encounter with many similarities of style and technique. In this paper, I am going to state the similarities of The Black Cat and Tell-Tale Heart to understand Poe style in short stories. To start with, in both of the stories, the setting is jail because the main characters of two stories are criminals. Such an entrance to the stories enables the reader’s attention to be more attracted and with the introduction parts, Poe aims to arouse wonder in the reader’s minds. The main story is told with flashback technique, which is typical of Edgar Allen Poe (Womack). To illustrate another analogy, I am going to give some information about the point of view of the stories. In both of the stories, first person narration technique is used. To understand Poe’s style better, it is essential to look out the reason of why Poe especially chose this narration style. Is it a coincidence or Poe deliberately directed his story with a first person narrator? For a few reasons, I can say that Edgar Allen Poe especially in both of the stories used this technique. His main aim is to create a discrepancy between what the reader perceives and what the narrator tells. In The Black Cat, for example, the narrator says that he does not believe in superstitions; however, what he does contradicts with what he says. Poe by using this technique shows that his character is telling lies about himself. The narrator’s self-denial is presented to the reader with a hidden way (Womack). The ironic tone in which the narrator tells the story makes the reader to think just the opposite of what he said (Robinson,369). About this issue, Brett Zimmerman who is the writer of Edgar Allen Poe: Rhetoric And Style says:
The Black Cat is equally true of Tell-Tale Heart. Both stories have two simultaneous perspectives: the narrative and the authorial. The author, Poe, puts various
The Black Cat is equally true of Tell-Tale Heart. Both stories have two simultaneous perspectives: the narrative and the authorial. The author, Poe, puts various