Literary Analysis Of 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 Black Cat” is one of Poe’s more gruesome stories. It is one of the darkest stories he has written. The narrator opens the story by saying he is sane. It is the night before he dies. The story talks about the narrator’s past and how he knew so many people who all

He consistently wrote poems about extreme intoxication and depression. It is very common for someone to be so down that they purposely drink themselves to death. “The Black Cat” by EAP is a short story by Poe that was made four years before he passed away. The years close to Poe’s death he started to get back to his alcoholism and depression stage in his life. Poe’s real life actions showed up quite a bit in his works including this one. In this short story Poe describes a man and wife who own a cat by the name of Pluto. This character Poe made I believe is him so the actions that happened next shows his insane alcoholism at it’s worst. One night this man comes home from his night on the town extremely intoxicated. As he walked in he reached for the cat and Pluto bit a slight wound on his hand. “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer”, showing he had no control over his actions. We can’t automatically turn to euphemisms when dealing with death. Poe was an amazing poet, yet the best of us still fall into a state that we can’t bring ourselves out of.The hardship he went through was a great inspiration for how Poe wrote great literature. In “To My Mother”,”Annabel Lee”, and “The Black Cat” we got a look into Poe’s life and into his mind. If we are not going to listen to multiple theories, lets atleast listen to the source of this

The deaths of his parents, sister and brother, all taken by tuberculosis, lead to Edgar Allan Poe’s obsession around the subject of death. This obsession enterprises historically ingenious writings, that did not just scare the reading population by inducing a death at the climax or tying in a death to create a gasp worthy ending. Poe’s historic greatness was his ability to use death as a catalyst, not an end. His stories, specifically short stories, strengthened the idea that the end of a life, has so much more meaning, than just the end. This precision was formed by how Poe ingeniously used the knowledge to not only comprise stories involving the subject of death, but used the stories to create deep ideas of the phantom of fatality. The short stories “The Black Cat,” “The Facts in the Case of M.Valdemar,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” all feature the inventive writing skills of Poe, that have enthralled populations since their publications.

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).

One of the more pronounced things in “The Black Cat” is the constant mood switching. One moment everything will be peaceful and happy, the next, the narrator will be stabbing a cat in the eye. Behavioral changes are one of the most notable effects of alcohol, Poe including these changes in the story emphasize the importance of it to the plot, and to the overall theme. Poe likely wrote literature to give an idea of what it’s like to be in his shoes: to suffer from an extreme addiction to alcohol. As it says in the story, “Pluto -- this was the cat's name -- was my favorite pet and playmate… Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character -- through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance -- had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse.” This sentence serves as a transition between the mood of delightfulness to the mood of terror, which can easily be seen by reading the rest of that portion of the story.

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

At the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and “The Black Cat” the narrators begin to explain their side of the story calmly, maintaining their composure and sanity. Yet, as both stories progress Poe’s main characters quickly unravel and spiral into frantic, unstable beings. Initially, the man depicted within “The Raven” believes a visitor is knocking on his door, a rational and typical thought upon hearing a knock. The main character’s mental health begins to slip when he yells and believes to hear in the empty doorway, his dead wife, “I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’ ”, (Poe 1). All remnants of the narrator 's sanity

The narrator clearly states that his first worry was how to conceal the dead corpse. He had no sorrow for his dead wife, or even shame that he had been the one that killed her. The only thought on his mind was how to get rid of the evidence of his newfound murderous habits. Poe shows the narrator truly growing away from God and everything acceptable. In a Transcendentalist’s mind, people should not ever be this way.

The quote I found most interesting was,”Goaded, by the interference, into a rage, more than demonical, I withdrew my axe from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain,” (Poe 5). This quote had a very appalling tone and this was due to the fact that the speaker had the reader believe he was set out to kill the cat. He was on his way to kill the cat, but then his wife grabs the axe. His wife tries to stop him, but he then turns around and burying the axe in her head, killing her. This causes read to experience shock after this surprising and gruesome act. This tone was also created partly to the connotation. Words used such as,”buried,” on page five adds to the appalling tone due to how horrific it is that he is not just hitting her with

Poe gives many gruesome and frightening details that make “The Black Cat” a horror fiction short story. Horror fiction is a genre of fiction designed to startle, frighten, or disgust the reader by inducing feelings of horror. Poe inducing feelings of horror through things that take place in the story such as the stabbing of Pluto, the first cat. When Poe wrote, “I took from my waistcoat pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of the eyes from the socket!” (Poe 436), he gives the reader a startled and disgusting feeling due to the gruesome depth of the sentence. Poe “darkens” the story even more with the hanging of Pluto and his wife’s murder. Poe writes about his wife’s murder and he gives evil details on the ideas of burying her in his

In The Black Cat, Poe describes a man that is about to be put to death for the murder of his wife. Again Poe introduces the main character as a well-mannered gentleman that gives into his vices and feels guilty for it.

The psychology or mental state of the narrator of Edger Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” is a broad area to analyze. The human mind is one of the most articulate system that is made in this world. It’s difficult to understand everybody’s actions and doings because everyone possesses their own unique patterns of thinking. Today, the world of psychology is hard at work to try to figure out the best answers to the questions we have about the mid. Even before the subject of psychology was produced, some writers loosely described the psychology and everything that goes into it. Edger Allan Poe was one of them who portrayed his characters in way that the reader could look further in to their actions and their behaviors to understand the mind better. Poe seemed to have an understanding and fascination for the human, and “The Black Cat” is one of them. The protagonist of the story and his psychology has brought into light in this short story. In this work, Edgar Allan Poe presents the main character, the protagonist, who becomes victim to many complex mind issues such as guilt, perversity, superstitions, revenge, and reverse psychology.

In his writing, the reader can taste the depression, emptiness, and sorrow Poe has felt in his lifetime. In Poe’s story “Alone” he believes that his childhood was “the mystery which” has bound him to the good and the bad (line 12). In Poe’s early age his father left and his mother died from tuberculosis. Soon after Poe’s mother’s sorrowful death, he was adopted by John and Frances Valentine Allan which meant he had to be separated from his brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and his sister, Rosalie Mackenzie Poe at a young age (Biography.com Editors). Before Elizabeth Poe’s death, Poe and his mother had a genuine relationship. Elizabeth Poe was an actress and Poe went to his mother’s plays where she would play Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet.” During this play, Poe would witness his mother croak and then revive, which gave Poe an odd aspect of life and death. Between Poe’s birth father leaving and his foster father’s neglect, Poe never had a strong male figure to look up to. Poe has experienced heaps of death of his loved ones throughout his life, losing both his, birth mother and his foster mother to the Grim Reaper by illness. The vicissitude in Poe’s life has influenced Poe to write his deep and meaningful poem,

“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