Comparing The Black Cat And The Tell-Tale Heart

Words: 328
Pages: 2

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession” (Albert Camus). In Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are greatly transformed by their confession of sin. The narrators of Edward Allen Poe’s stories “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” have similar reactions to their crime and at the build-up to their confession. These reactions are telling of the soteriology and teleology ideals of the romantic era. Hawthorne and Poe’s characters confess after being driven to do so by the manifestation of their guilt.
Hester and Dimmesdale confess because their guilt and its manifestation pushed them to do so. Once Hester confesses to Dimmesdale and decides to run away “the whole richness