The Black Cat Comparative Essay

Edgar Allen Poe is one of the most well known poets. Poe is known for his eerie and terrifying tales. Poe has three similar stories that stand out. “ The Cask of Amontillado” is about a man named Montrassor looking for a way to seek revenge on Forchanado. Montrassor seals Forchanado into a room behind the wall in his catacomb. “The Black Cat” is about a man that has a strong loathing of his cat and kills it, as time passes, he finds another cat and absolutely hates it, more than the last cat. This loathing leads him to get frustrated about it and kills his wife because she tries to stop him from killing it. Lastly “The Tell-Tale Heart” this is about a man that is disgusted by this man's eyes, so he stalks him and then suffocates him and then cuts him up and goes crazy because he doesn’t want to get caught. These three stories are all similar but all have I different kind of intensity to them.” The Black Cat” is the spookiest one out of the three, the narrator because

All this saneness is achieved through a series of household events. "In their consequences, these events terrifies, tortures, and destroys the Narrator" (Poe 522). The Narrator is married and has pets. "They have birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat" (Poe 522). The cat's name is Pluto, however in contrast to Montresor's friend, Pluto, the cat, is the Narrator's friend. In "The Black Cat" the Narrator is an alcoholic unlike in "The Cask of Amontillado" the enemy is the alcoholic.

	In Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Black Cat," symbolism is used to show the narrator’s capacity for violence, madness, and guilt. "The Black Cat," written by Edgar Allan Poe serves as a reminder for all of us. The Capacity for violence and horror lies within each of

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allan Poe had said. Whenever I read one of his stories, I feel like I’m in a dream. My two favorite works by Poe are “The Masque of The Red Death” and “The Black Cat.” “The Masque of The Red Death” and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates many similarities and differences in their symbolism, moods, and themes.

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying

The narrative, “The Black Cat”, includes many symbols. The black cat is more than just the title; it is the legend, Pluto, that leads the narrator down the path toward insanity (“The Black Cat”). Pluto was the ruler of the underworld and the judge of the dead in classical mythology. This connection is not just an accident that Poe put together. A home is supposed to be a place where an individual feels safe and secure with or without others. Within this story, a home becomes a dark and tragic place, full of madness and murder. “I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence” (Poe 719). The narrator turned on his pets before his wife; maybe the black cat and his wife was just too much for him to handle. The narrator kills the black cat, and then proceeds to kill his own wife. A couple in a home, would normally be happy and intact with a cat as a pet, but in this narrative, this household is not happy and healthy; his wife and pet become prey to his deteriorating mental state. Another symbol found in “The Black Cat”, is his wife; she could have been a hurtful or demanding force in his life. The narrator describes her as having “that humanity of feeling” (Poe 721). His wife at any point could have either saved him, herself, or both. She could have saved herself by running away from the alcohol-induced man. The symbols that were incorporated in this narrative made the narrator’s psychological state more comprehensible. The conflicts within this narrative were more easily understood because of the symbolism used, to tie the depressing narrative together.

Allan Poe. My Purpose is to show the effect of the use of irony on the progress of the short story. I Suspect that use of irony in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Black Cat," is one of the main points which allows the hidden character of the Narrator, and the truth of the situation to be revealed and helps the reader to comprehend the story better.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” the story tells how the narrator falls into alcoholism and turns into a violent, mad person. His change in personality causes him to kill his first cat. While in his fit of killing the second cat, his wife tries to defend the cat, then her husband accidently kills her. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman clarifies how the narrator has a wild imagination, but for treatment of depression, her husband keeps her confined to her bedroom (Gilman 88). With him taking away any way for her to use her imagination, it causes her to become extensive and turn it into craziness (Gilman 96). Both stories show significant similarities of the main characters suffering and how it affected their regular lives, but there’s a contrast between the two stories also.

At first sight, these two stories do not share much. One is about murder and violence, the other about two lovers. One is dark and quite frankly a little frightful, and the other story, although morbid, does not contain as horrific scenes as the other. One containing gruesome murders, and one with a suicide by poison. Both stories share a complex view of equanimity. Both stories encompass symbolism and death as a means of release. Both poetic, pithy. Both authors had their share of intimacy issues that shine throughout their works in different ways. Although not directly junctional to the orthodoxic views of the two short stories, I believe they are alike in this sense. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” share three common themes which include temptation, fulfillment, and corruption as well as both encompass allegorical content.

Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are both about murder. In “The Black Cat”, the narrator is a man who becomes an alcoholic and kills his wife in the cellar. In “The Cask of Amontillado” Montresor is a man who takes revenge on a friend by leaving him to die in the catacombs. Both characters are guilty of murder, but reader may think that the narrator deserves a milder punishment for the following reasons: he lost control, he did not plan his murder, and he was an alcoholic and had no control over his actions.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” the protagonist of the story is the narrator, and throughout the story he commits multiple heinous crimes. In the opening of the story, Poe places a somber mood on the work by revealing that the narrator will die the next day. Along with this the narrator states that a series of events have “terrified -- have tortured -- have destroyed” him (1). The narrator has grown up having pets—he loves them. When he got married, his wife allowed him to own many animals, such as “birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat” (1).

Within us, we have the dark and the bright side. We do the good, but have evil thoughts and some people act on it, thinking it may drag them to feel good in doing so. This informative short-story provides a perfect example on how we take control of our mind. Edgar Allan Poe, the author of “The Black Cat”, develops the central idea that violence solves problems. On the eve of an unnamed narrator’s death, he writes a story of how his life collapsed, turning around his love for everybody and falling into a big pile of a hopeless mess and madness by committing brutal actions.

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of Poe’s greatest literary works that embodies his signature themes of death, violence, and darkness. Poe’s main character begins his narration of his horrible wrongdoings regarding them as a “series of mere household events” (Poe 705). However, this is where Poe’s satire and irony begins and the story progresses to show the deranged mindset of this character as he tries to justify his actions. As the main character proceeds to rationalize his crime, Poe is able to convey a sense of irony through his use of foreshadowing, metaphors and symbolism.

I’ve always found my willpower in my deceased black cat. I was twelve when I received my first pet. It was a dog, I bet you thought it was the cat, and I named him Toby. Long story short, we had to give Toby back to the breeder after a day with him. Naturally, my eleven year old self was devastated that I couldn’t keep my pet. I got home from school one day and discovered that a stray kitten had found it’s way into my backyard. My dad, whom has never loved animals, was all about giving her away to the city pound, but my mom was all up for keeping her. After a lot of begging, my dad finally agreed that we could keep her. Surprisingly, my dad was the one that wanted to name her. He named the cat Justin, after Justin Bieber, thinking the cat was

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.