Edgar Allan Poe The Black Cat

Concerning “The Black Cat”, Poe vividly portrays individuality as a connecting theme to Romanticism because of the narrator’s treatment of each character of the story’s characters, his wife and the cat. In the story, the narrator kills his wife in a “more than demonical” rage, for no other reason than to express his rage at his wife’s interference between him and the cat (723). He acted alone, with no prompting from anyone other than himself. The cat as a character receives no different of treatment from the narrator’s wife: even the wife’s own intervention on the cat’s behalf does not save it from its eventual demise, rather the narrator “firmly resolved to put into death”(723). The only way the cat escapes death is through hinting at the narrator’s murder to the police through the house’s walls.

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

“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.

The Narrator in “The Black Cat” is explained as a man who fell into alcoholism and let deception take control over his mindset (Poe 79). His change of perspective over things causes him to believe his beloved first black cat (Pluto) is evil and demonic when the cat bites him one day (Poe 80). During the illusion from the excessive alcohol, he hangs Pluto (Poe 80). From guilt further on from killing his first cat, the narrator adopts another black cat. A while later, he comes to believe that the new cat has the same characteristics that Pluto had (Poe 82). In an act of fit from the new Black cat almost tripping him on the cellar stairs, the narrator starts to try to kill him with an axe (Poe 84). His wife comes in and tries to stop him, but instead that causes him to kill her. The narrator hides his wife’s body in a cellar wall, meanwhile the cat vanished (Poe 84). Four days later, the police came to do a thorough search. The narrator acted strangely calm and innocent, as if he had done nothing. They discovered her corpse with the cat standing on her head howling in the cellar wall though, and took the narrator into custody. (Poe 85-86).

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

When Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Black Cat” in 1843, the word “paranoia” was not in existence. The mental illness of paranoia was not given its name until the twentieth century. What the narrator is suffering from would be called paranoia today. The definition of paranoia is psychosis marked by delusions and irrational decisions. This definition could best be described in the nineteenth century as being superstitious and believing that supernatural powers are affecting our decisions. Superstition and being taken over by the supernatural is a recurring metaphor for paranoia in Poe’s story.

Although now seen as the father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allan Poe was previously viewed as a drunken failure. Within Poe’s writings much of his own life riddled with guilt, anxiety, alcohol, depression and death shines through resulting in works that appear unrelated yet once dissected prove similar. This is true for Poe’s works “The Raven” and “The Black Cat”. Poe’s examples of gothic fiction share the use of the color black and a rapid digression of the narrator 's sanity while seemingly unveiling Poe’s internal pain. Despite these similarities, Poe’s works also differ immensely. “The Black Cat” focuses around death while “The Raven” is fixed around discovering the reasoning for a bird 's arrival. Moreover, gothic themes seen within “The Raven” do not necessarily remain constant when compared to “The Black Cat”.

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

The struggle between good and evil ends badly for the narrator. Even though it is apparent that the narrator likes animals and seems like a good person toward the beginning, evil prevails. He ends up killing his cat and wife and also gets himself sentenced to death. He never finds a way to let the good he has inside of him shine out. A good example of this is when he decides to hang Pluto. He does it because he knows stabbing his eye out is evil, and thinks he will be punished if he goes ahead and kills him. Even though he knows what he did at first is wrong, the good in him is suppressed and he manages to make the situation even worse. Violence and death are also prevalent from the beginning to end of this short story; “I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence” (Poe 721). Here, even when the narrator tries to be good, and fight his urge to do wrong, he eventually becomes violent again. Death is shown three times, from Pluto getting hanged, to the wife getting hit in the head with an axe, to the narrator himself being sentenced to death. It is clear that with all of this violence and death, evil prevails over good. The last theme which shows up throughout “The Black Cat” is failing to learn from mistakes. The narrator repeatedly makes the same mistakes. He keeps letting his anger get the best of him and never finds a way to control it. Even after getting warning such as a house burning down after he kills Pluto, he still fails to change his bad behavior. It is obvious that the narrator never learns from his mistakes in his

A bunch of stories have happy endings right? The prince gets the princess, main character survives eight shots to the torso, all happy endings. Edgar Allan Poe isn’t like that. Most of his characters are dark and insane. They have one last shred of sanity then they refuse to keep it and then they end up going insane, much like the characters in The Black Cat, The Raven, and A Tell-Tale Heart. All three the men reach insanity.

The Black Cat is a short horror story written by Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer famous all over the world for his horror tales, in 1843, in the Saturday Evening Post. It has been often compared to another Poe’s story called The Tell Tale Heart. In both stories, the main character is an arrogant assassin who believes himself unassailable, but he also breaks down several times and he reminds his guilt.

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.