The Black Cat, written by Edgar Allen Poe, is a short story about a man, also the narrator, who starts out by living a “happy” life with his wife and favorite black cat, Plato. Although, he begins to be consumed by his drinking and becomes irritable. The black cat used to be by his side but now avoids him. This irritability leads him into becoming overly aggressive, which results in him hurting and murdering the cat. Then, a second cat appears who looks the same as Pluto but with a white spot on his chest. Eventually, the man starts to feel anger towards the cat and attempts to murder him with an axe, but his wife stops him. Unfortunately, his wife was hit in the head. The man then decides to bury his dead wife in his basement wall. He thinks he has got away with murder, but in the end, one learns that he had accidentally buried the cat alive with his wife. The cat reveals his hiding spot when he is caught by the police. Although it seems that the main character has committed these actions solely from alcoholism, it is obvious that there are signs he is also suffering from a mental illness. 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
“The Black Cat” is one of Poe’s more gruesome stories. It is one of the darkest stories he has written. The narrator opens the story by saying he is sane. It is the night before he dies. The story talks about the narrator’s past and how he knew so many people who all
The events that unfolded in Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The black Cat,” are all due to one person, the narrator. It is because of his Mental state, being an alcoholic, and being abusive to his wife and pets that the fault lies heavily on the narrator. What this paper will entail is all three of the reasons why it is the narrator's fault for what happens in the story and it will come to a conclusion based off the findings in the story.
The storyteller begins the story by stating from an early age he has had an obsession with animals. Poe states, “This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.” (Poe) This statement is evidence of the insanity the narrator experienced at a very young age. He goes on to explain that he and his wife have many domesticated animals, including Pluto, a large beautiful black cat. He describes the mutual fondness between him and the cat. This relationship between him and the cat, is strange. For years they have a growing friendship, until he started drinking alcohol in excess. The narrator goes on to explain how one night after getting completely intoxicated, the cat panicked and bit him. This causes the author to become angry and in a psychotic fit of rage, he takes a knife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes. After this encounter, the cat fears him, and tries to avoid him at all cost. In the beginning, the storyteller is regretful and feels remorseful for the cruelty. But soon we see the narrator’s insanity expressed when Poe states, “But this feeling soon gave place
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying
“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.
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.
"I grew day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others" (Poe 671). Poe had a very complicated relationship with transcendentalism, and you can clearly see this rocky relationship in two of his works. One of these works is "The Black Cat". A brief summary of this short story; the narrator of this story is an insane man who knows he's about to die. The story talks about a cat that he used to have, named Pluto. He was very close to the cat until he starts to abuse his wife and other animals. The cat no longer likes the narrator, then the cat gets hung. While this happens the narrator's house burns down. Later a new cat comes alone, much like Pluto, and at first, he has a close relationship with this cat. Once it's noticed the cat only has one eye, he hates the cat. Later the narrator strikes his wife on the head with an axe, and hides her body. What he didn't know is while burying the body of his wife, the cat ends up with her. The police then show up just to look around, and the cat starts making noise. The police hear this and break down the wall, and here they find the cat and the man's dead wife. The other literary work that refutes transcendentalism is the poem "Annabel Lee". A condensed summary of that poem; the narrator of the poem, and Annabel Lee fell in love while they are young. Even after Annabel Lee passes, the narrator does not give up on the love they shared. After reading "Annabel Lee" and "The Black Cat", it is clear that Poe denies many concepts of transcendentalism. In looking for the answers to life's questions, Poe relies on the idea that human intuition is harmful. The narrator in "Annabel Lee" alludes to this selfish intuition when his obsession with himself and the idea of love causes him to lose his Annabel Lee. Then again in "The Black Cat", he focusses purely on finding answers within the dark. Transcendentalist does not believe in a dark intuition, they like to look at nature and its light side for the answers to life's questions.
In the short story “The Black Cat” Edgar Allan Poe writes how the addiction of alcohol can severely affect one self’s psychological health and destroy one’s life. Poe begins the story in America, where a former animal lover turns into a psychopath since he is addicted to alcohol drinking. The first complication in the story is when the narrator starts drinking a lot and changes in character. The narrator’s drinking caused the narrator start abuse his pet animals and become violent as well as aggressive. In the second complication, the narrator attacked his black cat, Pluto, and gouged out its eye, and later hung the cat on a tree with a noose. In the climaxes of the story, the narrator’s house burned down, and he lost all of his belongings;
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
Here's a story about how The Big Black Kitty. The Big Black Kitty was raised by awful people, they never ever fed the Kitty so the kitty grew more and more hungry. So eventually Kitty snapped and it raided the house for food, then it hoarded and never stop hoarding. Kitty soon began to grow it never stops the last person alive to guess its height said it was around eight feet tall.
In the beginning, the narrator gave a confession in retrospect; he was an honorable man born as a sane, kind, loving. Additionally, he had a great love for animals. He married a girl at a young age. Their house was like a mini zoo; birds, gold fish, a dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. The man singles out a huge, beautiful all-black cat as his favorite, named Pluto. Because of its unusual intelligence, the wife jokes around that the cat might be a witch in disguise. Over the course of time, the narrator and Pluto created a strong bond between them.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the story of a woman spiralling into madness whilst her physician husband refuses to acknowledge that she has a "real" problem. On the other hand The Black Cat by Edgar Alan Poe is about a man who is initially fond of cats however as the plot progresses he becomes an alcoholic making him moody and violent, which lead him to torture and kills the animals and eventually also his wife. In Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Black Cat," symbolism is used to show the narrator’s capacity for violence, madness, and guilt .The recurring theme present in both these stories is that the main protagonists claim that they suffer or have been taken over by a form of madness. In this essay I shall examine the
Have your parents or grandparents ever told you the curse of the black cat. The black curse has happened to many people before. The black cat always walked around near halloween. The curse has even happened to me.
Edgar Allan Poe is well-known for his captivating tales of the macabre through eloquence and wit. In many of his short stories, Poe was able to exploit his audience's fears through allegory and descriptive details of murder and madness. One of Poe's captivating, yet mad, narrators helms "The Black Cat," a tale of paranoia, alcoholism, and murder. There are several things that make the narrator an intriguing character including his psychological state, the imp of the perverse, and the effect that alcoholism has on him.