Alcoholic Themes In The Black Cat By Edgar Allen Poe

Was all of that alcohol really worth all the damage it caused to you? Poe was an alcoholic, if Poe wasn’t writing he was drinking. He drank his life away not just figuratively but literally. Yet seeing Poe outside of a saloon in soiled clothes and disoriented in Baltimore, on election day leads one to speculate about what may have happened to him. This scene could cause one to think that Poe was a victim of a political kidnapping, where they would get people drunk. Poe would have certainly fallen for this because, he was an alcoholic who struggled with this sickness his whole life.

Afraid of his master, the cat slightly wounded the narrator on the hand with his teeth. Because of the cats reaction to his picking him up, the narrator pokes out one of the cat’s eye. The eye of the cat which is

To conclude this argument it is very clear that the actions that took place in, “The black cat,” are the narrators fault. It is on account of him being an alcoholic, being in a poor mental state, and being abusive to his wife and pets that the fault lies in the

Before the episode of killing Pluto, the narrator, after returning home drunk and sensing that the cat was avoiding his company, seized it violently. During this physical bout the cat

“The Black Cat” is an old short story written by Edgar Allan Poe an American Writer. It is a horror fiction story which demonstrate the fascinating changes that the human mind has during the abuse of alcohol. The protagonist is physiological corrupter by the abuse of alcohol and his mind play games with itself. He changes his personality as the story progresses and the way that he treats others around him. Everyone is affected by his behavior even his lovely cat. The cat becomes the object of his hate and in some way it is the first thing that he blames about his irrational acts. In the short story “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe, uses a varied forms of Irony, dramatic Irony, verbal Irony, and situation irony to produce a transformation of love threw hate along of the story.

(Silverman 186). This quote means that Poe had a bad drinking problem many people could die from over consumption of alcohol. “Dr. Snodgrass addressed Poe’s problem as to him drinking too much alcohol”. (Silverman 187). Poe was found outside a bar unconscious in Baltimore, the well-known author was also a known alcoholic.

Alcohol can increase or bring out the anger that a person has, it can influence them to do things that they would not do in a everyday scenario and cause them to lash out instead of dealing with the situation rationally. At alchoholism.about.com they say "Alcohol intoxication brings out people's natural tendencies in the expression of anger" saying that maybe for our narrator even though he was a kind hearted person he may have had anger that he let out while drinking, connecting him symptoms of drug abuse. When he begins to drink in the story he starts to take out some of his anger on his pets, but never Pluto, his cat. As his drug abuse with alcohol worsens he completely stops caring and feeling remorse, tearing out the eye of his best friend Pluto. His anger consumes him as he consumes more alcohol and it changes him into a violent person.

Edgar Allan Poe, the acclaimed poet, has created a multitude of short stories, one being “The Black Cat”.The short story depicts an alcoholic on his slow descent into insanity; this relates heavily to the author’s own life, being an extreme alcoholic himself. The narrator of “The Black Cat” is not only driven mad by alcohol, but also by a black cat, as you might guess from the title of the story. At the beginning of “The Black Cat”, you can tell the narrator’s alcohol addiction is taking its toll when he starts abusing his wife and pets. His actions slowly led up to him killing his cat, Pluto, and then killing his own wife because tried to defend their second cat from him. His meticulous writing style, diction, syntax, and imagery in his short stories are used to portray his emotions.

In “The Black Cat,” the man was married to a patient and caring woman. They acquired another cat that, according to the man, looked remarkably like Pluto (709). One day, the cat almost tripped the man while they were walking down a flight of stairs. This “exasperated” the man “to madness” (Poe 709). He lifted an axe and “aimed a blow at the animal,” (Poe 709).

The Black Cat is one of Poe’s most memorable stories. The story was first published in 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. This like a study of the psychology of guilt, paired with other works by Poe. “Near the beginning of the tale, the narrator says he would be "mad indeed" if he should expect a reader to believe the story, implying that he has already been accused of madness” (Cleman). Poe is creating a sense of confusion for the readers and making them think more about the story before reading. The story is centered around a black cat and the idea of deterioration of a man. From his prison cell, the narrator is writing the story about his life which is falling apart. He has a love for animals, and for his wife that he married young. One of the things that he takes on as a hobby, is

He claims that he hung the cat because it loved him, and because it did not do anything to deserve the punishment. Because of this, the sin that he committed would jeopardize his soul forever. No sane man would do this to an animal that he claimed to love. Again the narrator is not in control of his body and is being controlled by the supernatural and shows signs of mental illness.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” one of the main details involved in the plot is alcoholism. Fortunato thoroughly enjoys good wine and drank a lot. Not only did he drink often, but he also was extremely knowledgeable about “fine wines” as Poe writes. Fortunato liked to think of himself as a judge of whether a wine was good or not. Based on all this, Montresor decided to tap into this weakness of Fortunato’s to seek his revenge after Fortunato mocked Montresor’s family name. Montresor then caused Fortunato to become drunk. In this and other stories, alcoholism and drug usage are very prevalent in Poe’s writing, but the references always seem to reflect his own life addictions and show us how truly depressed he was.

In the short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe the reader is led onto a journey in which they are told the gruesome actions of a disturbed narrator. This subjective narrators' actions are spurred by a heavy alcohol addiction and deteriorating mental state. The narrator tells the reader of his deeds,which ultimately led to his demise, starting with the killing of Pluto. Pluto was the household cat of the narrator and his wife. He was very much cared and adored for but one night after returning home “much intoxicated” the narrator carved one of the poor beasts eyes after he upset him. After that event a disagreeable mood leeches onto the narrator and he decides to hang the pet using a noose and attaches it onto the limb of a tree . A

By just reading what the main character says in the story, it can be realized that he in fact is not mentally stable. He even admits that he has a problem with alcohol by saying, “But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like alcohol!”

At the beginning of the story, the man was essentially “happy” with his wife and black cat, Pluto. The story is light until the man begins drinking. He has begun to like that the cat did not want to be around him and avoided his presence anymore. This is possibly due to the fact that he is not happy with his drinking. However, one night when he came home and frightened the cat, which