n the story as healthy and calm, the Black Cat narrator presents "plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events (p320)." Although he hopes for "some intellect [that] may be found which will reduce [his] phantasm to the common-place," the Black Cat narrator still states, "mad am I not (p320)." This element of the supernatural is one in area where the two narrators diverge a bit. However, as the two stories progress, this difference is used as a balancing agent that allows the characterizations of the narrators to parallel one another within the action of their respective stories.
             Both narrators are on the verge of complete madness, waiting for that certain element to push them over the edge. In the first part of the story, the reader learns that the Black Cat narrator "was noted for the docility and humanity of [his] disposition (p320) in the past. It is indicated that he was at one point, a seemingly happy man. There is no indication of such a past in the life of the Tell-Tale narrator. His murderous intentions "to take the life of the old man (p277)" are made clear in the second paragraph of the story. Thus, Poe added elements of the supernatural to he plot of The Black Cat. It is left unclear as to whether or not there are actually two cats in the story, or if the original cat, which Poe so aptly named after the Roman god of the Underworld and judge of the dead, Pluto, has come back from the dead in retribution. The narrator's wife's talk about superstitions involving witches and the eerie gallow-shaped white marking on the black cat are also elements that add to the narrator's eventual snap into madness, and what push him to the same violence as the Tell-Tale narrator.
             This violence is brought on by an irrational fear that both narrators posses. Both the Tell-Tale and the Black Cat narrators refer to their states of mind as a sort of dis...