Poe Illuminating the Obvious: Dark Thesis

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The irony here is that the crime he failed to commit -- the killing of this cat -- led to the narrator's doom. The irony is heightened in "The Cask of Amontillado" because the entire time the narrator, who is looking back on the incident fifty years later, evinces no lack of confidence or surety until the very end, where his feelings of guilt become suddenly and drastically clear. Even though the ultimate end of the story is pretty much foretold at the beginning as far as plot is concerned, the internal effects on the narrator create an ending that is ironically more unnerving than his external actions (Henninger 35).

Both of these stories also clearly illustrate the way guilt and punishment necessarily follow crime. The narrators of both stories end up feeling guilty for their actions, and both are surprised by their fates. In "The Black Cat," the narrator acts impulsively in each of his murderous acts, and even at the end is left feeling somewhat shocked by the turn of events -- but guilt and punishment find him even when he least expects it. In The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator is anything but surprised by his actions -- he shows himself to be a very capable and cool-headed murderer, which is why he gets away with his dastardly deed (Baraban 48). But despite the length of his planning and the careful execution of his plot, the narrator still finds himself with noticeable feelings of guilt -- it is an inescapable facet of human existence, in the world of Poe's story.

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The similarities of these stories do not end with the details of their plots or their themes of murder and guilt; both also involve the specters of alcoholism which plagued Poe throughout his adult life and were a major factor in his early and untimely death. The fact that he recognized this problem is clear from its appearance in these and other stories in both direct and symbolic ways, and demonstrates one understanding of his works and their commonalities that is clearly autobiographical. Like his characters, Poe is unable to fully face the truths that he has already acknowledged. Both of his murderers in these stories know they have done wrong, yet they persist in their actions as either justified or mitigated by certain other circumstances. With Poe, though, no one escapes their fate.

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