Throughout quarter one, we have had an in depth look at gothic literature. However only two stories stand out to me. One is “A Rose for Emily” and it is a southern gothic story. “A Rose for Emily” centers around the life of a southern lady named Emily who is a deranged character. During her youth, her father chased away any suitors turning her into a spinster. After her father died, she was left alone in a dilapidating house with a negro man servant. Unexpectedly, Homer Barron popped up and toyed with her feelings. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the marrying kind and he enjoyed the company of men. Still, Emily thought they were going to get married and when he spurned her away, she couldn’t bear the thought. Therefore, to keep him at her side she …show more content…
The plot centers around a man and his dealings with a black cat. In the beginning, he is a benevolent man who loves animals dearly. He has a black cat that he is especially fond of but, as time marches on he develops a taste for alcohol. The black cat was called Pluto. The alcohol twists him into a wretched creature. In time, his beloved black cat turns into the object of his irrational outbursts. Then, one wine filled night the narrator left a visible mark on Pluto by removing one of its eyes. Seeing it every day made the narrator very guilty. Therefore, he needed to kill it. He did so, by hanging it. Afterward, his house caught on fire but, it left a single wall that outlined the cat. Having a single wall left after everything had been engulfed in fire is like the story “There Will Come Soft Rains” which has a lone wall that survived the torrent of flames. Also, having the outline of the cat’s carcass prominently on the last standing wall was particularly effective in creating an atmosphere of horror in the story because it’s as if Pluto is still watching him. To resume, a while later the narrator stumbled across another cat. Pluto and the black cat both are very large and they resemble each other almost perfectly. The only difference between them is that the black cat has white splotch. As time passes, the cat’s white mark gradually looks like a noose. Uncoincidentally, the narrator killed Pluto with a noose. The narrator also murders his wife because she didn’t want him to kill the black cat. When they went down to the cellar of an old building the black cat followed them. Following the couple down the steps vexed the narrator so, much that he wanted to kill it. Quickly, the wife stopped him. He became so enraged that he put an axe through her brain. After killing her he placed her dead body into a spot in the wall. This is much like the way Montresor killed Fortunato by putting him into the wall
	The second black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s guilt. The night after the narrator’s house caught on fire, he went to a bar where he saw black cat two. Black cat two resembled black cat one in every aspect except one. The finding of black cat two is symbolic of the night in which the narrator had came home from a bar toxicated. When the narrator began to leave the bar, black cat two began to follow him and this is symbolic of the guilt that follows the narrator. The narrator noticed that black cat two resembled
Being a member of an antebellum southern aristocracy meant that she was in a family that was defined as a “planter” also known as a person owning property and twenty or more slaves. After the Civil War, the family went through another hardship. The woman and her father kept on living their lives as if they were still in the past. Her father refused to let her get married. When the woman was thirty years old, her father died. This took her by surprise. After her dad passed, the woman refused to give up his body. The town thought it was just part of her grieving process. After she finally accepted her dad’s death, she grew closer to Mr. Homer. This took the town by surprise. Homer explained to Emily that he wasn’t the marrying type. She did not like hearing those words. Emily went to town and bought arsenic from a drug dealer. Because of this, the towns people were certain she was trying to kill herself. Emily’s distant cousins came to visit because the priest’s wife had called them. Homer left for a couple of days, but then came back after the cousins had left. Emily wouldn’t talk to any of the towns people. They wouldn’t confront her given her reputation. They wanted to ask her about the awful smell that had been coming from her house and to talk to her about her taxes. At first, they said her taxes were over looked in debt to her father, but then they changed their minds and sent her notices. The woman refused to pay them! Years later Emily had
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
Having moved into a new house, the narrator happens across a black cat, which then follows him home. Nerves rattled, the narrator does his best to avoid the cat. When that fails he tries to kill it, accidentally killing his wife in the process. After sealing his wife's body into the basement wall, he is interviewed by the police. Not unlike in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator of “The Black Cat” cracks under the pressure of his guilt and gives himself up. Symbolism and suspense make “The Black Cat” worth reading.
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.
Another thing is that in both the cat was bribed with fish by the rat/mouse. Also in both they have to cross a wide river to get where they need to be. An in both the cat ends up falling asleep on the way across the river. Finally, in both after the cat gets upset or mad with rat/mouse, he/she tries to catch him and rat/mouse end up escaping.
The man was married at a young age to a women who was friendly and shared his love of animals. They procured many interesting pets such as birds, dogs, monkeys, and most importantly, a large, black cat named Pluto. This cat became the man’s favorite pet
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
Clearly the most ironic element in "The Black Cat" is the Narrator's own perversely unrealistic and distorted view of the horrible scenario that unfolds. He dismisses his awful cat mutilation as a "vile or silly action" committed, perhaps, like other foolish acts committed by "Man" "for no other reason than because he knows he should not." He goes on to wonder, "Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such" (FN3)? Later he finds himself haunted by the specter of the dead cat, but he comes up with a rational, albeit improbable, explanation for the strangled-cat image on his burned-out wall. His married life is a shambles and he lives, as we will learn later in the story, with a murderous, suppressed rage. But he barely mentions his wife until the end, when, in fact, he kills her; and he calmly goes about his daily life as if nothing were wrong, giving no hint that this peaceful facade is about to crumble.
And in this case, Pluto is the narrator's love object. After loosing the love object, most people replace their love object with another. It was a black cat— a very large one— fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body ; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast. I continued you caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced
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
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).
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.
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.
Another important character from the story is Homer Barron, a man who develops an interest in Miss Emily, “Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable” (519). According to the story, it seems that the whole town was thinking they would get married: “She will marry him” “She will persuade him yet” (520). However, Miss Emily ends up killing Homer by poisoning him. There seems to be two reasons why she did it. One is that she wanted to marry him, but it appears he refused. The other one is that he might be homosexual: “he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club, that he was not a marrying man” (520). All these speculations about the principal characters Emily and Homer have one questioning what the narrator’s intention towards them was really. “The narrator wants to trap us in the speculations made about Emily’s and Homer’s characters by making us believe that Emily will kill herself or that Homer is homosexual” (Wallace). He might be right on this statement because this is what one is most likely thinking about through the reading.