Hey i gotta do an essay on the diff' simi' of The Black Cat and Ligeia. hope u can help , thanks !!!

-- Anonymous, April 02, 2002

Answers

hey i don't have an answer for you but it sounds like you are in the same boat as me. i have a research paper on an analyses of the black cat. any ideas on where to find anything?

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2002

Dissimilar stories. Only thing in common is the haunted obsession of the narrator before the death of his wife, that traps the narrator irrevocably in the past catastrophe whether he wants it or not. The oppressiveness of inescapable memory is a strong theme in Poe(obviously "The Raven") and implies some guilt and horror in alienation from the memory as he tries to go on with life. Of course the Black Cat alcoholic is a murderer with little regard for his wife. It is all put off onto the tell-tale cat. Ligeia's husband seems more in thrall to the will of the wife who replaces the body and soul of the second wife.

The more stories you read the more it seems they are numerous variations of a general theme. The relationship bewteen the man(sometimes narrator) the past and forever wounded, isolating memories. The past is loss but still blanketing the present. The future is sometimes a beacon, sometimes painfully unclear and remote, to resolve his existential crisis.

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2002