October Nightmares IV #21: Edgar Allan Poe Special (Part 2) - The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), The Black Cat (1843) & The Cask of Amontillado (1846)

If there's one thing Edgar Allan Poe enjoys - aside from using words such as quaffing - it's writing stories from a murderer's perspective. I suppose if you resembled the lovechild of Bill Murray and Hitler, you'd also have an obsession with weirdos. Not that I can say much in that department, considering that I wrote a Poe pastiche from the perspective of a murderer...

But it's definitely a recurring element in Poe's work. As mentioned the previous instalment, Poe is the master of the macabre and the Lord of the Goths. He's widely regarded as one of America's earliest practitioners of the short-story. So murder fiction is entirely within his wheelhouse. Typically, a Poe story can be split into two categories: ghoulish, supernatural tales, and the more grounded variety which deals with mundane matters like immuring your mate behind a brick wall. This review is about the latter.

Let's get comfy and look at three of these tales.

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

The Tell-Tale Heart - or Why You Should Get a Lock on Your Bedroom Door - is perhaps the most famous of the murder stories. It has had several film adaptations, including the obligatory Vincent Price one and part of an episode of The Simpsons.

In the story, an unnamed narrator tells us they're not insane but they've just killed a man. Isn't that Bohemian Rhapsody? Their victim is an old man with whom they live; an old man who the narrator claims to love, but who also has a horrible "vulture-like" eye that makes the narrator want to kill them. After 8 nights of planning/standing outside the old man's bedroom door, like a kid listening to his parents shagging, the narrator murders the old man, dismembers his body, and buries him under the floor boards. I'm starting to suspect this 'I'm not insane but...' is the new 'I'm not racist but...'

Despite the carefully planned murder and clean-up, which the narrator claims means they cannot have a screw loose, the old man screams as he is being killed and the neighbour calls the police. The rozzers come round and the narrator explains that the scream was them having a bad dream, and finding no evidence to the contrary, the police suspect nothing. The narrator, however, is feeling increasingly guilty and begins to hear the old man's heart beating underneath the floor.

It's a great read, one which perfectly converges gothic horror with murder mystery. Everything is obfuscated under a veil of darkness, metaphorically and literally. Quite who the old man is and what this 'eye of a vulture' represents, is left unexplored. In fact, Poe lends detail to the narrator's excuses and exploration of the murder but everything else is left vague. Understandable for an unreliable narrator, mind. Is the narrator male or female? What's their relationship with the old man? What exactly are their motivations? And is the narrator actually insane, or is there something supernatural at work?

The narrator should be grateful, however. If you live below people, there are worse things to hear than "the beating of his hideous heart!"


The Black Cat (1843)

Poe goes for a radical concept with this one: a cat that's actually helpful. I had to climb back onto my seat after discovering that twist.

The idea behind The Black Cat is similar to that of The Tell-Tale Heart, but with two key differences. Firstly, the narrator is what we in literary circles call 'a dick'. He claims to be an animal lover, he and his wife have many pets - his favourite among them a big black cat named Pluto. Then one day, he gets drunk and makes the mistake of thinking you get a cat to do what you want - when it actually has 'selfishness' penned into its diary for the next twenty years. The aggrieved cat bites the bloke, so he gouges its eye out with a pen-knife. Bloody hell.

From then on the cat avoids him, which just pisses the narrator off even more. He eventually gives it the Mississippi Burning special, and lynches the bugger. This sets his house on fire for some reason. Racked with guilt the narrator sees signs of his misdeed everywhere. Eventually he obtains a new cat from the pub, which resembles the slain Pluto - save for the patch of white fur on its chest which is in the shape of a gallows. The cat amplifies the man's guilt, so he attempts to kill it with an axe. His wife intervenes, and is herself murdered. I've done shit when I've been drunk, but nothing that compares with this guy.

The narrator buries his dead wife and cat behind a wall in his basement. A few days later, the police come to investigate his wife's disappearance. As before, the police find nothing - this being the days before CSI - and the narrator is about to get away with everything. Now this is where the second big change comes. So, the big metaphor for the protagonist's guilt is a wailing cat. The police hear the cat behind the walls, break them down, and discover the wife's corpse with a cat on her head. Even the narrator is shocked - "I had walled the monster up within the tomb!"

Obviously, those cats I hear wailing outside my house at 3 in the morning are just manifestations of my guilt for all those murders I have committed.

Overall, it's the same basic premise as Tell-Tale Heart, but with more suggestion of the supernatural and a less mysterious embittered old drunk as its lead. He's basically a Jack Torrance or Ralph Kramden type. You can practically hear him say "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody" as he harasses the poor cat.

The Cask of Amontillado (1846)

Now here's a villain I can get behind. Montresor, a murderer and our narrator, tells us the tale of how he killed his friend, Fortunato, and got away with the whole thing. His motivation? Numerous minor injuries and unspecified insults caused by Fortunato; which sounds like my level of pettiness. I plan my colleagues' massacres whenever one of them helps themselves to my milk.

What separates The Cask of Amontillado from the other two stories, is that its protagonist is pretty damn pleased with himself - like he did a fart at dinner. There are no metaphors for his guilt, and no consequences, it's just Montresor fifty years later telling some unspecified listener his dark tale. He's probably someone's granddad thinking it'll make an appropriate Christmas story.

The Cask of Amontillado takes place in an Italian setting where everyone LARPS Shakespeare, i.e. carries swords and spends their time on Machiavellian schemes. Montresor plans to lure his 'friend' Fortunato to his death by telling him he has obtained a rare vintage of Amontillado wine. Knowing that Fortunato obviously enjoys a drink - Fortunato dresses as a jester during Carnival and looks a prize pillock - Montresor invites his friend to the catacombs of his palace to try the drink. This being the days before Josef Fritzl gave basement dungeons a bad name.

Montresor is stone cold, which is highlighted in the writing: "I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation".  That's fairly straightforward and clinical for Poe. Anything else would have just been silly. Montresor has formulated an intricate plan to murder his supposed friend, afterall, and he doesn't even bat an eyelid. They even have a bit of banter about Montresor not being in the Masons, which some scholars think may be the reason for his need for revenge. Montresor also lays it on a bit thick (with a trowel, you might say) when he pretends that he gives a shit about Fortunato's cough.

So, the pair travel through the dungeon and, upon reaching a niche at the end, Montresor chains up his drunken friend. With his quarry secure, Montresor seals him in - brick by brick. Sorry Fortunado: all in all, you're just another prick sealed in a wall.

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