The Black Cat: Insane

When the narrator drinks, he becomes delusional and his mood changes. He can suddenly become angry and takes his rage out on his wife and his cats. The narrator can be described as a violent and abusive person when intoxicated. The author explains that the narrator has a liking for violence. “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.

Afraid of his master, the cat slightly wounded the narrator on the hand with his teeth. Because of the cats reaction to his picking him up, the narrator pokes out one of the cat’s eye. The eye of the cat which is

The narrator in “The Black Cat” is unreliable because he is an alcoholic. According to the text in the beginning of the story the

The storyteller begins the story by stating from an early age he has had an obsession with animals. Poe states, “This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.” (Poe) This statement is evidence of the insanity the narrator experienced at a very young age. He goes on to explain that he and his wife have many domesticated animals, including Pluto, a large beautiful black cat. He describes the mutual fondness between him and the cat. This relationship between him and the cat, is strange. For years they have a growing friendship, until he started drinking alcohol in excess. The narrator goes on to explain how one night after getting completely intoxicated, the cat panicked and bit him. This causes the author to become angry and in a psychotic fit of rage, he takes a knife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes. After this encounter, the cat fears him, and tries to avoid him at all cost. In the beginning, the storyteller is regretful and feels remorseful for the cruelty. But soon we see the narrator’s insanity expressed when Poe states, “But this feeling soon gave place

The fate of the cat’s life is still unknown. At this point, the author points out that “[t]he kitchen light came on,

In addition to his distorted sense regarding his relationships, the Narrator views his drinking problem as some alien, outside force. He conveniently blames his alcoholism for his miserable behavior, as if he had nothing to do with it himself. At the

Alcohol can increase or bring out the anger that a person has, it can influence them to do things that they would not do in a everyday scenario and cause them to lash out instead of dealing with the situation rationally. At alchoholism.about.com they say "Alcohol intoxication brings out people's natural tendencies in the expression of anger" saying that maybe for our narrator even though he was a kind hearted person he may have had anger that he let out while drinking, connecting him symptoms of drug abuse. When he begins to drink in the story he starts to take out some of his anger on his pets, but never Pluto, his cat. As his drug abuse with alcohol worsens he completely stops caring and feeling remorse, tearing out the eye of his best friend Pluto. His anger consumes him as he consumes more alcohol and it changes him into a violent person.

In “The Black Cat,” the man was married to a patient and caring woman. They acquired another cat that, according to the man, looked remarkably like Pluto (709). One day, the cat almost tripped the man while they were walking down a flight of stairs. This “exasperated” the man “to madness” (Poe 709). He lifted an axe and “aimed a blow at the animal,” (Poe 709).

He began to grow addicted to alcohol and hence his atrocious actions, he also began to recognize it as a disease. The narrator calls alcohol a “Disease [that] grew upon him [me], for what disease is like alcohol!” (Poe 5). The narrator abusing the substance of alcohol helped cause and strengthen Depersonalization

He claims that he hung the cat because it loved him, and because it did not do anything to deserve the punishment. Because of this, the sin that he committed would jeopardize his soul forever. No sane man would do this to an animal that he claimed to love. Again the narrator is not in control of his body and is being controlled by the supernatural and shows signs of mental illness.

In fact many of his rages were caused more by alcohol rather than the black cat. The black cat was also vividly developed. At one point early in “The Black Cat,” the narrator spends too much time to describing his then delightful pet. But, as the story progresses both characters changes dramatically. The cat is dynamic is that it is hung, reappears with a white splotch on its chest, and has a different disposition than before.

In the beginning, the narrator gave a confession in retrospect; he was an honorable man born as a sane, kind, loving. Additionally, he had a great love for animals. He married a girl at a young age. Their house was like a mini zoo; birds, gold fish, a dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. The man singles out a huge, beautiful all-black cat as his favorite, named Pluto. Because of its unusual intelligence, the wife jokes around that the cat might be a witch in disguise. Over the course of time, the narrator and Pluto created a strong bond between them.

The narrator of “The Black Cat” is unreliable because of his alcoholism and state of mind. In his early life, he might have been dependable. However, as the story proceeds, it becomes establishable how unrealistic his story is. Alcoholism affected the narrator's actions and it might have even altered his memory. Being an alcoholic changed the narrator to the worse.

At the beginning of the story, the man was essentially “happy” with his wife and black cat, Pluto. The story is light until the man begins drinking. He has begun to like that the cat did not want to be around him and avoided his presence anymore. This is possibly due to the fact that he is not happy with his drinking. However, one night when he came home and frightened the cat, which

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.