Psychological Mindsets in the Black Cat, My Last Duchess, and Because I Could Not Stop for Death
The reality of life is that at some point it will all come to an end. End, one referencing it to when one is pronounced dead. Since death is unavoidable, we must take into account death because it is the finalization of our lives spent on this earth as well as an account of the way we left this world. There are numerous ways that one can leave this world, some die peacefully while others may die by force.The following will reveal the psychological mindsets concerning death as depicted in Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, and Dickinson’s “Because I could not Stop for Death”, and the ramifications of perverseness, pride, and eternity
In “The Black Cat,” Poe uses perverseness to explain the narrator’s pursuit to murder Pluto, the black cat, and eventually his wife. The narrator had once loved animals, but alcoholism contributed to his change of temperament and irritableness, which led to the abuse of his pets and his wife. His reasoning for gouging Pluto’s eyes out, and then murdering the animal was because it loved him as he rejected it. The narrator had a sense of self-loathing and self-hatred that made him want to continue doing wrong to Pluto, which we identify to be: This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself-to offer violence to its own nature- to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only- that urged me to continue finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute (Poe 138).
After the death of Pluto, another cat who resembles Pluto, but with an added splotch of white fur becomes the narrators’ new pet, which fills the void of the narrator’s loss of Pluto. The new cat begins to disgust the narrator: “By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred…I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
In “The Black Cat,” Poe uses perverseness to explain the narrator’s pursuit to murder Pluto, the black cat, and eventually his wife. The narrator had once loved animals, but alcoholism contributed to his change of temperament and irritableness, which led to the abuse of his pets and his wife. His reasoning for gouging Pluto’s eyes out, and then murdering the animal was because it loved him as he rejected it. The narrator had a sense of self-loathing and self-hatred that made him want to continue doing wrong to Pluto, which we identify to be: This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself-to offer violence to its own nature- to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only- that urged me to continue finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute (Poe 138).
After the death of Pluto, another cat who resembles Pluto, but with an added splotch of white fur becomes the narrators’ new pet, which fills the void of the narrator’s loss of Pluto. The new cat begins to disgust the narrator: “By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred…I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a