Guilt and paranoia are two common emotions that us humans experience all the time. They appear when we lie, cheat, or even murder somebody. Humans think with 2 consciences, the good one and the bad one. These consciences are influenced by situations that we go through, and Edgar Allan Poe shows this in The Black Cat. The deranged narrator’s excessive alcohol addiction causes him to lash out, spiraling out of control into a violent, bloody story of guilt, death, and paranoia. This story relates to Guilty Conscience by Eminem (ft. Dr. Dre), sharing the idea of a guilty conscience, and battling between good and bad thoughts and decisions.

Guilty Conscience is about a devil and an angel battling. Eminem is the devil, similar to the narrator in the story, while Dr. Dre is an angel, similar to the narrator’s seemingly nonexistent good conscience. They battle over different scenarios, attempting to convince different people to make the right or wrong decisions. In The Black Cat, the narrator doesn’t battle with a good conscience, but begins to feel remorse after the appearance of the second cat, causing  him to regret his excessively violent acts against an innocent woman and ripping and gouging the eyeballs out of his beloved cat’s eye sockets.