New and Disturbing Perspective (Honors Lit. 2)

I read Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat, and The Tell Tale Heart, both of which are centered around a murder of someone with a peculiar or frightening eye. These stories are told in the first person, narrating from the mind of what most would call a psychotic murderer. However, while reading these two famous stories, I was drawn in. It is widely known that Edgar Allen Poe was a writer of disturbing stories. But it is these disturbing stories that made him a famous classical writer.
While reading these stories, I got an introduction to Poe’s style of writing. It was dark, and a little troubling, but at the same time, it held my interest. Edgar Allen Poe’s thinking in these writings are the entire core of the stories. Had Edgar Allen Poe not written these stories from the murderer’s point of view, it would not have been as interesting. There are much more books that narrate from a spectator’s point of view on a murder than from the murderer’s. Spectator narrations consist mostly of describing how horrible and wrong the murders were. So of course by now we understand that murder is wrong, and certainly unjustifiable. But then there’s always that lingering wonder of how the felon could even go through with something so brutal, and why. Reading these stories gave me a new perspective that I hadn’t seen before, thus holding my interest.
One thing in particular that sparked my interest was a line Poe used in The Black Cat. “Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action, for no other reason than he knows he should not?” This gave me a way of actually relating to the killer, which was already scary to think of. To the murderer in the story, killing the cat was a sort of rebellion, which I know I have found myself feeling or wanting to feel the same way. Since Poe brought up this common trait of humans, I got even more interested. In a way, he was pointing out the psychopath in all of us. This was certainly a new and wild way of thinking that could get just about anyone to wonder more about the complexities of a murderer.
Not only did I get the answer as to how the murderer’s mind works, but I also found yet another complexity in the story. “I hung it because I knew that it loved me…—hung it because I knew in doing so I was committing a sin”. Now I even had the answer to what made the killer want to kill his victim in the first place. It was both logical and insane at the same time. This sentence is a way of saying that he wants something to change in his life because he’s tired of going through the same old good-guy routine, which is how he was in the beginning of the story. This also applies to why Poe’s stories have so many readers’ appeal.
It is the new perspective and thought process that inhibit this madman’s mind that draws us in. Most people prefer not to tap into this sort of mindset and write it down on paper, so when you get a chance to actually read it, it’s refreshing and frightening enough to make you want more. It’s sort of like a treat. For example, candy is a treat, so when someone gets it, they want more because it’s not every day that they get it. The same reasoning applies to this type of writing.
These stories embrace the part of the mind that society would rather shun. The part of the mind that everyone attempts to hide, or pretends not to notice most of the time. While most murder stories are focused on talking about how wrong it is, Edgar Allen Poe goes into the actual insanity behind it all. Reading into Poe’s stories is like exploring a whole new place. It was an adventure, so to speak. The stories tapped into that childhood curiosity that is always asking why? So of course when offered an answer, we want to explore into it. I suppose it’s the closest thing to insanity we can touch upon without actually being insane. The works of Edgar Allen Poe are so interesting because they’re curious and out of the ordinary. Ordinary is boring and seen all the time, so seeing something out of the ordinary is what makes things more exciting. Because it’s different, or something you’re not used to, it takes you out of what you’re used to seeing, and out of your usual boundaries. This out of the ordinary thinking puts excitement into Edgar Allen Poe’s stories because reader’s can rarely predict what is going to happen next.