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Foreshadowing In The Black Cat

Decent Essays

In “The Black Cat”, the use of foreshadowing serves to emphasize the theme that sinners will be punished by justice. For example, when the narrator visits the ruins of his house, he sees on a wall "the figure of a gigantic cat [with] a rope about the animal's neck", foreshadowing how the narrator will be put to death for murder. Moreover, he describes the form of white hair on his second cat's chest as "the representation […] of the GALLOWS! ‒ oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime ‒ of Agony and of Death!", further foreshadowing his execution. The fact that the motif of death by hanging always comes back to the narrator and that the gallows represents to him an instrument of "Crime and Death" implies that suppressing his inner

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