Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are often filled with a feeling of morbidity that involves getting rid of one's burden or feeling of guilt. In addition, most of his stories involve an individual who is forever haunted by something, either emotionally or physically, from which they wished to be free. In Poe's short stories "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat," the theme of guilt and death is presented in a very powerful sense. The narrators of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" are forever haunted by a feeling of guilt that they try to remove. The removal of this feeling causes their emotional and physical demise which ultimately results in their downfall.
             "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story about what has been called "the demonic self;" a person who feels an impulse to commit an unwarranted act of evil. "The Black Cat" is ultimately about what Poe describes as a "spirit of perverseness;" an obsession with doing a wrongful act merely because it is wrong. An overall theme of evil and removal of one's guilt is clearly evident in Poe's writing. The narrators in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" each demonstrate their weaknesses by performing a wrongful act in order to "free" themselves. However, these feelings of evil eventually come back to haunt the characters which further emphasizes the power of the "demonic self" and the "spirit of perverseness" which is the cause of the narrator's demise.
             When Poe first introduces his short story "The Tell-Tale Heart," there is an overwhelming sense of madness and anxiety within the narrator:
             True! –Nervous –Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease has sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute...