Insanity In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

The story of “The Black Cat” starts off with a man that seems like an alcoholic, but has the tendencies of a sociopath. The way he acts throughout the story makes him seem like a sociopath, based on the fact that he abuses his wife and cat out of anger, even though he claims to love his wife. Though it is difficult for sociopaths to love and care for others, it isn’t impossible. The man lacks organization, and like common in sociopaths, tend to lean on substances that eventually lead to substance abuse, like alcohol. He talks about his past and his hardships. He also talks of his love for whom he married, and the cat they got together afterwards. The wife was becoming fond of this cat and the cat showed kindness towards his owner, the man. He rapidly becomes more out of control to the point that he starts to abuse his wife, quoted, “I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.” The man became angry that the cat was nice to him and how his wife loved that cat. He later on in the story admits his anger is getting out of control; eventually, he starts to take his anger off on his wife. One day he becomes so fed up with the cat’s kindness that he uses a pen-knife to remove the cat’s eye causing the cat to begin to ignore him, in a sense of distrust and fear. This enraged the owner even more towards the creature that he hung it in a tree. It is not clear

Have you ever thought about why people choose to make the choices they make? There is controversy over if people are able to make their own choices. Almost all of the time you have full control over your decisions. You have the ability to follow the rules if you want to and know that there could be a good or bad consequence to what you do. An individual has the power to choose their response in any situation.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

“The Black Cat” is a short story that was written by Edgar Allan Poe, which was published in August 19, 1843. This story is about an unnamed narrator who is writing in his prison cell. The reason he is writing this is because he is going to be hung, due to the actions he writes about, and he wants to set the record straight. He starts by saying that when he was a child, he had always loved animals. He shows that he was a kind hearted man who loved animals and would not do anything to hurt them until he started to drink.

Infamous for delving into the magnitude of perversity instilled in human nature, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” (1843) takes a morbid look into its narrator’s mind, as he transforms his benevolent nature to one that allows for utter perversity to ensue. Categorized under the genre of gothic horror, critics read “The Black Cat” as a reaction to the Enlightenment – shunting the idea of humans as rational thinking beings. One does not need to take a leap to analyze this text through an irrationality lens – with the narrator committing atrocities in the “spirit of perverseness”1; from torturing his cats to murdering his wife. With this, it is granted that Poe sheds light on the innate perversity of human nature, but here I argue that in the “The Black Cat” the perversity and irrationality exhumed by the narrator is a reaction to the new requirements of masculinity brought upon by the nineteenth century. With the new pressures to conform to the exaggerated requirements of gender roles, I will assert that Poe’s short story contends against the gender rigidity and its pathological effect on an individual’s psychological.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to

Too much alcohol is getting consumed. He is losing his mental control and is on a rampage. The “Demon Alcohol” has taken over him, he needs help. Can someone help him? In his short story, “The Black Cat,” Edgar Allan Poe states the nameless narrator is in a prison cell, retelling his story of his struggles from the abuse of alcoholism, perverseness, and animal cruelty. He was married to his beautiful wife and had a variety of pet animals. The narrator starts to talk about his beloved black cat, Pluto, and how he believes it’s evil and the reason for his crazy actions. He came home drunk one day assuming his cat was avoiding him. He tried to grab his cat, but with fear, the cat nipped at his hand. The violent situation caused the narrator

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.

In “Tell-Tale Heart” written by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator was driven by an “evil eye” to undertake a murderous and dreadful exploit. In the 1800s, when it supposedly took place, people believed the superstition upon “evil eyes” about how they had a painful curse. The narrator had been vexed constantly by a vulture-like eye that belonged to an old man who he especially loved. He was particular and conscientious towards the entire slaughter. This could immediately conclude that the murderer was insane since he took the extent to assassinate someone over an eye. However, the narrator possibly could have been sane and just extremely anxious, therefore guilty, despite how hysterical he may have acted.

The title of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” leads the reader to believe the short story is about one black cat. However, almost in the middle of the story, a second cat emerges. Since the title suggest there is only one cat, and the narrator hints the second cat is one of the first cat’s nine lives, comparison of the cats become necessary to see if they are one and the same. For example, both cats desire to be around the narrator and both are missing an eye, but each cat has a major difference in the color of their fur.

“The Black Cat” is one of Poe’s most memorable stories. The story first published in 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post, is a study of the psychology of guilt, paired with other works by Poe. The start of the narrative should intrigue readers, by the imagery that is recognized by writers. John Cleman wrote the article “Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense” analyzing the work written by Poe and his usage of themes and symbols. At the beginning of this article, Cleman stated this: “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” (630). 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 drinking, and when he starts to drink, his personality shifts, as he starts abusing his wife and pets. The narrative is full of gruesome scenes in which he hurts his pets, including murdering them. Later, he continues the abuse and kills his wife, also. Eventually, the cops show up, and take down the wall. “Then quickly they began to pick at the stones, and in a short time they saw