Death Across Stories

Poe's life was enveloped in death.  Prime examples of death in Poe's life include his mother and his wife, Virginia.  When reading The Black Cat, Tell Tale Heart, and The Masque of the Red Death by Poe one can clearly see the death that appears in these three short stories.  One can branch off of death and relate all three stories to fear and emotion (intense emotion or lack of) as well.  When looking at these stories the main connection between death, fear, and emotion is that fear and emotion lead to death.  In the case of the Tell Tale Heart the narrator describes how the old man's vulture eye has led him to plan the old man's murder.  The narrator was unable to stand the old man's eye (this is emotion).  One can argue that this lead to the narrator becoming fearful of the old man's eye, but it depends on how one interprets the story.  In the end, the narrator's emotions led to the death (murder) of the old man.  In The Masque of the Red Death Prince Prospero locks him and his loyal subjects in an abbey to escape the Red Death.  The reason why the prince did this is because he feared the Red Death and did not want to get sick.  In the end the Red Death eventually makes its way into the abbey and kills the prince.  In this story the reason that death came about is due to the arousal of fear.  In The Black Cat the narrator killed his black cat and his wife.  From reading the story the audience learned that the narrator didn't have any motivation to kill his cat or wife, what led him to do that was that his emotions towards animals changed.  The narrator used to adore animals but as time wore on he began to be more irritable and emotionless towards his animals.  He eventually scooped the black cat's eye out due to him being intoxicated.  The narrator then hung the cat on a tree.  This is the first time the narrator had killed something.  The narrator eventually obtained another cat in which he tried to avoid because he began to want to kill the cat.  After almost tripping down the stairs the narrator ended up killing his wife instead of his cat.  The reason behind why the narrator ended up wanting to kill the cat is due to his lack of emotion.  One could argue the reason why the narrator didn't kill the second cat for so long was due to fear of killing the first cat.  The result was death no matter what.  In all three of Poe's short stories one could relate emotion and/or fear to be the main cause of death in the story.  Death was a major part of Poe's life, and it is clear to see this in these three short stories.