Poe 7/12/09

What I found similar in the three stories we read written by Poe was the issue of mental instability and sanity. In "Tell-Tale Heart", the main character tries to plead his sanity after he has killed a man, that reason being specifically unidentified, yet the more he does, the more it becomes evident that he is guilty. In "The Black Cat", the lead character also seems to be on the verge of insanity, in which when the character thinks the cat is trying to avoid him so he hangs it. Then when coming in contact with a similar looking cat, he tries to kill it, only to be stopped by his wife, who then he kills because she tried to stop him. All the while, he is fighting the guilt that is brought on by his actions, trying to convince himself he is in fact sane. "The Fall of the House of Usher" deals wth the lead character, Roderick Usher's mental problems. Many mental diseases are described by Poe that cause Usher to act insane and leads the narrator, a visitor, to think he is in an extremely poor mental state. All three of these stories dealt with the inner mentality of people, and what can happen when one actually does lose his or her sanity. This acts as "Americanizing" gothic literature in which just as English goth writers used castles and demons to convey fear and uncertainty in the novels, Poe uses the inner mental sate of human beings and how though someone may appear normal on the outside, no one knows what's actually going on inside that person. He shows his readers that mental instability can be just as dangerous and frightening as anything else.