Edgar Allan Poe, reputed as the father of American short stories, is a poet, writer and literary critic of nineteenth century. His works, most of which explore the dark side of consciousness and subconsciousness of human beings, was well-known for horror and mystery. "The Black Cat" is one of Poe's masterpieces. It depicts love, hatred and fear between men through the narration of the changing relationship between a mentally abnormal man and a black cat. Loneliness, death, torture and abnormal psychology are core elements in "The Black Cat" This thesis aims to conduct a research on how Allan Poe managed to achieve psychological horror in "The Black Cat."…
The use of vivid imagery in “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most fascinating aspects of this story to me. Poe shapes the mood of suspense using language, symbols, and the supernatural in such a dark and intriguing way. These three things create a sense of foreshadowing, which helps set the stage for the reader and navigates the path from one shocking event to the next. Poe’s use of these three literary techniques that incorporate an added twist as the narrator hopes that the reader, like himself, will be convinced that these events were not "...an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects" (Poe, 695).…
In Poe’s short stories, he uses literary devices like irony and foreshadowing to increase reader interest in his stories. Irony and Foreshadowing helps to create suspense, anxiety, and humor in his works. They also help to capture the audience’s attention and draw them into the story. Poe’s irony and foreshadowing are integrated in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.…
The only other living thing in her home was her black cat; which for the superstitious symbolizes bad luck. Alonso describes how her…
Not everything one is told by a narrator is true. In “The Black Cat” Poe’s narrator changes between reality and his fanatical state creating mystery. “What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on that morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of it’s eye” (Poe 119). This quote makes some ponder on the thought that the new cat is no ordinary cat, but indeed Pluto himself from the grave, seeking vengeance on his abusive owner and murderer. Throughout the story, Poe’s delusional fanatical state becomes clear not only through his dialogue, but through his actions as well. “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about it’s neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;-hung it…
The problems of alcoholism and insanity are recurring themes in Poe’s literary works. One can say that “The Black Cat,” one of Poe’s short stories, portrays much of the author’s own views on his substance abuse problems and mental illness. The unnamed narrator from “The Black Cat,” struggles with his addiction to alcohol and his hatred for two cats become prevailing. The narrator states, however, that he was never like this before he loved animals, “never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe, 3). The narrator takes on a cat and cares for it, however, as his drinking problem progressed, he states, “I grew day by day more moody… my disease grew upon me.” (Poe, 4). After a night out drinking, he decides to cut out one of the cat’s eyes and ultimately, kills the cat. Later, another cat strangely identical to the first cat with one eye comes around and as the narrator tries to kill the second cat he ends up killing his wife instead. He buries the body of his wife and the second cat behind a wall and police later hear the cat calling out from inside the wall. In relation to Poe’s life, Poe was known to love cats and had a female cat named Catterina (Mercier). The killing of the first cat relates to Poe’s own destruction of the things he loved and desired due to alcoholism. He lost his job in 1837 due to his drinking and feuding with other editors (Edgar Allan Poe, Encyclo.) The killing of an innocent wife can closely relate to Poe’s views of women in his own life, through the deaths of both his mother figures and then eventually his wife. Poe writes about women who carry a unique beauty to them. The women are compassionate to the men they…
The cat is metaphor for sin. Junior has led a boring life and thinks the “wild and alien” (26) cat will make him more interesting. However, the cat ends up hurting him more than it helps him. “The carpeting -- every last strip of it -- had been torn out of the floor, leaving an expanse of dirty plywood studded with nails, and there seemed to be a hole in the plasterboard just to the left of the window.” (38) He underestimated the risk of taking in the cat, just as man underestimates the impact of sin on his life. He thinks he can minimize its destructive power by having minimal interaction…
Poe’s stories; stories both feared, and loved. Poe lived a very mysterious life. He was known as an alcoholic, and a drug addict, but who was Poe? We know that his childhood was rough, and that death took away many of his loved ones. He had many tragedies in his life, and only lived to be 40. Two of Poe’s stories, “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Black Cat,” are not similar in any ways, except the recurring deaths in the plot. The characters, setting, and conflict are also elements of fiction that make these two different stories unique.…
First, I will focus on the affected character and the nature of his condition. The main character of “The Black Cat” is clearly a man. His name is unknown. However, the reader learns to know a reasonable amount of information about his background. When he was a child he used to like animals above anything and he kept this affection for them until his adulthood. For that period of his life, he also attributed to himself “tenderness of heart[2]”. He married a woman who was kind, patient and shared the love for animals with him and together they took care of various pets. Among these pets, one has a privileged position, a cat named Pluto, so that the main character speaks of friendship and regard. The disease he suffers from is clearly alcoholism, for he first states that “my disease grew upon me - for what disease…
In this paragraph, I will talk about the story, “The Black Cat”. In the beginning of the story it shows how the narrator was a very happy child and that he loved animals very much. He married early and got a cat named ‘Pluto’. After a while he turned into an alcoholic, which made him maltreat his wife, and pets, except he restrained himself of mistreating Pluto his cat. One day he came home intoxicated. He noticed that Pluto was avoiding him. He seized the cat, and in response, Pluto gave him a slight wound with his teeth. Then the narrator cut out one of Pluto’s eyeballs. After that incident Pluto avoided the narrator even more. Then one morning, with tears in his eyes, he put a noose…
In The Black Cat he shows many signs of insanity and violence. As his insanity was developing he thought his cat Pluto was coming to avenge him. Pluto was the name of a Greek mythology god of the underworld. Since Pluto (the dwarf…
He gives us reason to doubt many of the aspects he tells us for he declares, “Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not--and very surely I do not dream” (1). Instantly, the reader suspects and realizes that he makes some effort to insist he is sane and one wonders whether he is truly insane or suffers some form of psychopathy, which is not altogether the same thing. Furthermore, the narrator commits unspeakable crimes to further convey his unreliability. In the first act, the narrator cuts out Plutos eye. He admits to being intoxicated at the time. Furthermore, and in another indication of the soundness of his reason, he realizes – albeit in hindsight – that the cat bit him out of fear and not some unprovoked malevolence. Additionally, the phrasing of his testimony, saying, ‘The fury of a demon instantly possessed me,’ and ‘My original soul seemed to take its flight from my body,’indicate that he’d succumbed to an alcoholic fit of rage. His reaction to the remembered act – ‘I blush, I burn, I shudder’ and ‘I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse’ – point to an understanding of the criminality of the act. The narrator commits the worst crimes and justifies his actions to…
The short story “The Black Cat,” by Edgar Allen Poe, plays off the fear and trepidation of readers by sharing the details of a horrific murder through the killer’s point of view. However, several details in the story, such as the decay of the body, the police’s presence, and the appearance of a second cat, allude to the idea that the tale may in fact not be true, and cause the reader to doubt the reliability of the narrator. By implying that the narrator is indeed lying, Poe puts into question the sanity of the speaker, while also suggesting the need of a scape goat, in a second cat, to retain innocence.…
Poe uses sporadic em dashes throughout both The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart. The dashes show a break in the flow of the thoughts and speech of the narrator. This suggests disjointed thinking processes, possible insanity and a highly unreliable narrator. The story opens with the narrator confessing his unhinged nervousness; “TRUE! – Nervous – Very, very dreadfully nervous.” The narrator’s anxiety at the very beginning of the story establishes the sense of unease and ensures that the reader is feeling the full effects of the narrator’s psychological issues. The tension heightens in the reader as the narrator slowly but surely descends into madness and admits to murdering the landlord. Similarly in the Black Cat, Poe utilises em dashes in his writings, ensuring the reader feels the suspense and the tension that the narrator is feeling over murdering his wife. Like the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator in The Black Cat shows similar signs of anxiety and fear about being accused. The Black Cat narrator exclaims in great nervousness; “When I first beheld this apparition --for I could scarcely regard it as less--my wonder and my terror were extreme” when the cat – whom he killed – first appears in an outline in the walls. The em…
In the short story "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator, never being identified, states that he is sane. He goes on to say that he is kind and respects the fidelity of friendship. He claims he loves pets and likes to hang out with them. The pets in his house include "birds, goldfish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat". Pluto ,the cat, of all pets was the narrator's favorite. The narrator has a lot of conscious and unconscious feelings that motivate him to behave as he does in the story. He does not really understand all of these motivations, his own behaviors, or the psychological basis for the reasoning of his actions. After reading further, there were many questions that arose in my mind. The most prevalent of all the questions were how much can be rationally explained? And are superstitions real? After reading the title the first thing that came to mind was the black cat superstition. Cats have always held a variety of notions among all cultures, especially a black cat. The majority of humans have always associated black cats with something bad or evil. I myself have always believed that the superstitions following black cats are just a hoax believed by the naive.…