Caliban Amelie

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

A Scottish Proverb once said, “Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat.” This quote applies to the theme of the novel,“The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” by Avi. The theme is don’t judge a book by its cover and in the quote, it says to not judge someone by appearances because they might be different than what you think. The first example is shown on page 24, “One always needs a final friend.”

While researchers aren’t sure why, cat owners are less likely to have a stroke than those who don’t own one. When you consider that cats lower stress, blood pressure and cholesterol, it’s easy to see why we’re less prone to

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

I Agree with this quotation because it is very true, you can't determine a persons character by who they are when everyone is watching. Obviously everyone is watching so they are going to try to be a better person than they truly are. but when they're by themselves or "in the dark" they are going to be them true self because nobody is watching so if they make a mistake they can just say that it didn't happen because nobody was there to see it

My first example is that the people you judge could become really good friends of your later. In the beginning of the book when Ally first meets Bree, Ally immediately judges Bree by the way she was acting at the moment. She didn’t know that Bree didn’t want to move and was being forced against her will to move to the

The person who actually protected Cat was Christian, however this is an example of another factor in the book that has to do with the gender roles portrayed in Black Creek. Everyone in this town seems to have a fairly old fashioned idea of how men and women are meant to relate to one another. Almost all male and female relationships are driven by the idea that men are there to protect women and, vice versa, women are there to care for men. Take, for example, Cat’s relationship with her father. Almost every time he is brought up it is to say that Cat is bringing him something or talking about how he needs her. She cares for him like a mother would a child. Still he refers to her with pet names that are demeaning and disempowering. “I was either

My curiosity soon took over and before I knew it, I was looking into the eyes of an injured calico cat. My sympathy for the cat increased exponentially when I saw that her back foot was contorted,

Naturally, cats were sacred to Bastet, and to harm one was unlucky and a crime against her. Bastet’s priests kept sacred cats in her temple, which were thought to be incarnations of the goddess. When a cat died, they were mummified and would be presented to the goddess as an offering, sometimes in carved cat shaped vessels.

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).

Like Montresor, the Narrator is a character who thinks he has been wrong in some way. He explains in the letter that he wrote, of how he believes he is a tenderhearted person, and that after marring at a young age he and his wife were able to have a love many kinds of pets. He wrote, "We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat" (Poe 137). The cat's name is Pluto. Compared to The Cask of Amontillado, Pluto was the Narrator's friend who injured and insulted the Narrator by simply trying to avoid him later on in their life instead of being a compassionate friend.

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.

For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him”. He abused all the other animals and even his wife but he never hurt Pluto. The first black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s evil heart. It shows favouritism and obsession with black cats from the start this story, later after he had murdered Pluto, he still went out and realised when he saw the second cat that it is what he was looking for. “What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes.”. The second black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s guilt. This fact about the cat made him hate more simply because he felt guilty of what he had done to Pluto. His guilt and religious torment gives us an insight to his insanity.

“It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.”

In the short story, both cats follow the narrator around the house; however, their motives seem to be different. The first cat, Pluto is loved by the narrator. According to the narrator, Pluto was “my favorite pet and playmate”, and it seems the cat reciprocated the love and would follow the narrator throughout the house (Poe). Pluto wanted to be with the narrator so much that the narrator had difficulty leaving the house and making sure the cat did not follow him outdoors. Their companionship lasted for several years, with the narrator being the one to solely feed Pluto and Pluto wanting to be by his side. Until one day, the narrator’s personality changed, and he killed Pluto and gets the second cat out of his feelings of remorse. The second cat was loathed by the narrator, but just as Pluto, the second cat wanted to be near the narrator. Likewise, the second cat would follow the narrator’s footsteps throughout the house, which would irritate the narrator profusely. The irritation seemed to encourage the cat to be around him even more and included the cat sitting under the chair, jumping onto the narrator’s lap and cuddling with him. The cat seemed to enjoy making the narrator angry and the narrator would wake at night and find the cat lying on his chest and as he states, “find the hot breath of the thing upon my face (Poe).” Since the second cat wanted to be near the narrator even though the narrator despised him, enhanced the belief that it was the second life of Pluto wanting the narrator to remember what he had once done, but that was not the only similarity.