Please comment on the similarities and differences between the narrators in "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado."

Poe is a master of creating first person narratives where
we suspect that the narrator is profoundly unreliable, and these two excellent stories
are no exception. The biggest similarity that can be identified between the narrators of
these two stories is the way that they are clearly shown to be insane to a certain
degree. Note how the narrator in "The Black Cat" finds the second cat so abhorrent and
what kind of emotions a simple cat stirs within him:

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I am almost ashamed to own--yes, even in this
felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own--that the terror and horror with which the
animal inspired me, has been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be
possible to conceive.

He is a
character who is struck by unreasonable terrors and whose actions are based on these
fears.

Likewise, Montresor is shown to be a bloodthirsty
narrator fixated on achieving the most terrible of
revenges:

I
must not only punish, but punish with
impunity.

The way in which
Montresor punishes Fortunato so terribly for some supposed slight whose nature is never
explained seems to suggest the insanity of the
narrator.

Considering differences, it is clear that
Montresor has carefully thought through his crime and how to commit it without being
caught. It is definitely a premeditated murder, cunningly carried out so that Montresor
remains free. In contrast the narrator of "The Black Cat" kills his wife in a fit of
anger, and then quickly has to decide how to conceal the body.