The Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe

Romanticism is an intellectual, spiritual, and literary movement that begins at the start of the nineteenth century and concludes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of the many characteristics that are associated with Romanticism, the characteristics that are most evident in literature from this period are the characteristics of individuality and imagination. The author Edgar Allen Poe exhibits these characteristics in his works “The Black Cat”, and the “The Raven”.

Many modern and older short stories are written around a central theme. Most authors write about many different themes and their works are generally focused around one specific theme meant to send a message with a deeper meaning to the reader. In Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hawthorne centralizes the stories around the theme of evil. In “Young Goodman Brown,” the protagonist is a puritan who goes by the name of Goodman Brown. In the middle of the night, he decides to wander into the woods to meet with someone for an evil deed. As the story progresses, the reader finds out he is meeting with an old man that is thought to be the devil himself. As Goodman Brown goes further into the woods with the devil, he recognizes some people from his town. He quickly finds out that the people are also in the woods to makes deals with the devil. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” the protagonist is Reverend Hooper. Hooper attends his church wearing a black veil that completely covers his face. The reader never finds out why he covers his face, but he preaches to his churchgoers about secret sin and that everyone has done something evil they want to hide. Based on that, readers can infer that he has committed an evil, secret sin of his own. Throughout both of Hawthorne’s works, he uses motifs, symbols, and the themes themselves to connect to the nature of evil in the two stories.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” the allegory Goodman Brown, a man devoted to his faith in our Father the Lord, after making a hard decision that would follow him for the rest of his life ends up trying to make peace with the fact that he cannot take away the decision but can try to not make the matter worse. When Goodman Brown discovers the “depths of darkness” he is in he begins to have a loss of faith. The line for the story “’My Faith gone!’ cried he, after one stupefied moment. ‘There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee as this world given.’” represents the fact that it appears that Goodman Brown lost his faith. That line also shows how he wished for the devil’s worship to come and retrieve him.

Since the beginning of time, there has always been day and night, evil and light. Throughout history, the basis of good versus evil has emanated. Good and evil has etched its place in every culture whether taught through passed down stories, depictions written on tablets, stones, or parchment paper. In the story, Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne reveals the traveler as a figure that highlights one goal. Emphasis is placed on the traveler’s methodology as he employ’s several techniques to manipulate and deceive the vulnerabilities of Goodman Brown. Hawthorne carefully stresses the traveler’s demeanor, features, setting and communication methods in detail. What is Hawthorne trying to say about the intricate interaction between Goodman Brown and the traveler?

Edgar Allan Poe said “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” Throughout his short stories; “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe sets up his characters to subconsciously reveal their insanity. Often using syntax clues and patterns, Poe shows the madness of the narrators of his short stories. The constant theme of denial of insanity further convinces the reader of the character’s psychosis. Characters themselves often prove they are not in touch with reality through their actions. Through syntax, denial of insanity, and character’s actions, Poe allows his narrators in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to reveal their own insanity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “Young Goodman Brown”, is a suspenseful story in which we see various forms of symbolism. This story presents us with the protaganist, a young and innocent man named Goodman Brown, which by his name is actually a good religious man. He departs away from his wife faith, to embark on a journey into the woods, he will return by morning. His wife faith begs him not go. On his journey, he finds himself on a dark path and it swallows him up as he advances along the path. Goodman Brown shows us that his faith is not as strong as he thought himself to be. Symbolism in this story, is used to illustrate the uncertainity of Brown’s faith, and the evil that tries to pull him in.

In both, Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” the protagonists, Young Goodman Brown and the narrator experience a journey into the subconscious. Both stories have an overlap that blurs the boundaries of reality and fantasy. It is truly the supernatural aspects of these two stories that force the protagonists and the reader to delve into the realm of the subconscious and to scrutinize good versus evil and real versus imaginary.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne introduces Goodman Brown, who doubts himself and reiterates his false confidence to himself repeatedly. His struggle between the evil temptations, the devil, and the proper church abiding life, is a struggle he does not think he can handle. This story is about a man who challenges his faith in himself and in the community in which he resides. Goodman Brown must venture on a journey into the local forest, refuse the temptations of the devil, and return to the village before the sunrise.

In “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown was constantly surrounded by evil. The use of the events, characters, and symbols that Hawthorne implemented throughout the story to help illustrate that evil was present in the townspeople that Goodman Brown resided with, and how Goodman Brown’s faith in them had greatly diminished. Humanity is basically broken in the story, and the people closest to Goodman Brown struggled with differentiating the choices of good and evil. During the course of the story, Goodman Brown was deeply concerned about the idea of the townspeople learning about his meeting with the devil.

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”.

"Insert clever quote of your choice here". This quote from "The Black Cat" perfectly illustrates the psychological undertones present in Edgar Allan Poe's work. Poe is known for using various techniques to show the reader the darkness that lies in the minds of men. One such technique involves telling the entire story from the point of view of a single character, whose account becomes less and less believable as the story goes on. Another concept that is present in many of his works is "The Uncanny" - a feeling of unease caused by something that is both familiar and strange at the same time. This essay will analyze and demonstrate the use of the uncanny in Poe's "The Black Cat", and how it's used to bring us inside the troubled mind of the protagonist.

Young Goodman Brown” Literary Analysis The short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very good book to read and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. In the story, Goodman Brown leaves his wife to set out on a journey with the devil. Along the way, he ponders over the situation of being sinful. He ends up seeing the religious people of his community at a satanic meeting and has second thoughts about their individual characters.

Poe and Hawthorne, both wrote many short stories with the result of becoming two astounding American writers. In the short stories by Hawthorne, you uncover an extended amount of symbolism throughout each story. In Young Goodman Brown, for example, “And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with pink ribbons of her cap”. (620) This example enforces the stress of youthfulness and innocence that Hawthorne is promoting for the young women named Faith.

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat follows a man who is confessing his most brutal sins which have led him to where he is now; in a jail cell awaiting his execution. This man commits some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, but he wishes for the audience to see them as “commonplace” (137), as he does not see his own actions in such a light. The Narrator sees his actions as “ordinary” (137) and “natural” (137) and hopes that the audience will feel the same way. The Narrator attempts to convince the audience that he did nothing wrong and that anybody in his situation would’ve done the same things; this is the theme of The Black Cat: Justifying one’s own actions. In the opening two paragraphs this theme is presented in order to set the tone for the remainder of the story and help readers gain a better idea of how the story will play out. It also helps readers to characterize the Narrator, which aids in understanding his actions and the story as a whole. Edgar Allen Poe effectively presents the theme of justifying one’s own actions in the first two paragraphs of The Black Cat by having the Narrator briefly detail his sanity, present his actions as commonplace, and provide a positive self-characterization. Poe’s effective communication of theme within the first two paragraphs shows how well written the story is and makes it a very enjoyable read. The Narrator sees himself as a good person who did nothing wrong and will not accept others seeing him as anything less. However, this

When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.