The Black Cat Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis of “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death”
"No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood" (1). Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the macabre; his very stories injecting fear into the hearts of his readers. Poe's life was filled with tragedy, as several of the important women in his life, including his wife and daughter died at a young age. He utilized poems and books to express that tragedy. The short stories, "The Black Cat," and, "The Masque of the Red Death," both written by Poe, enhance the theme of fear. "The Black Cat," was about a narrator who had gone crazy and was so overcome by guilt that he went to extreme measures including
In “The Black Cat,” there are words such as “horror” (1), “murder” (6) and “gore” (6), all of which emphasized the narrator’s insanity and his fear of the cat, which he thought he must remove. His abhorrence of the cat grew when it, “inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth” (5). The constant fear caused the narrator to feel like he was possessed by a demon, with his original soul now gone, substituted by a “fiendish malevolence” (5). Clearly, the narrator is someone who has qualms about everything and was mentally unsound. Additionally the narrator had a growing suspicion of his cat referring to it as a “monster” (5) and a “burden on my soul,” (5). These thoughts demonstrate that the narrator felt like the cat knew of his hideous deed and it caused him much guilt, even though the cat didn’t. The demonic diction contrasts with, “The Masque of the Red Death,” as Poe initially uses words such as “happy” (1), “palaces” (1) and “magnificent” (1), to suggest the Prince Prospero doesn’t seem to care much about the dangers of the terrible disease--the Red Death--but instead wants to focus on having a good time and partying when throughout his kingdom, the Red Death was claiming many lives. The happy setting originally portrays that the palace of Prince Prospero is a much safer and joyful place than the deranged lair of the narrator in “The
In “The Black Cat” the narrator is shown as an insane and superstitious character. His insanity was evident when he felt, “absolute dread of the beast” (4), which was his cat, when he “slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (3), and when he later went on to “bury the axe in her [his wife’s] brain” (5), when she tried to stop him from murdering another cat. The narrator’s unstable mind compares to “The Masque of the Red Death” as Poe also portrays Prince Prospero as insane but in a different way. The prince was not a murderous, bloodthirsty creature, but a carefree person who did not seem to care for the Red Death, a devastating disease who brought death wherever it traveled. Prospero was “happy and dauntless and sagacious” (1) and felt that “the external world would take care of itself” (1) and also thought that, “it was folly to grieve, or think” (1). Prospero’s carefree thoughts show that the scope of his insanity was not only placing his life in danger, but the lives of all his subjects as well. The jeopardy Prince Prospero placed his guests in compares to “The Black Cat” as the narrator also placed the life of his wife in danger with his superstitions and his tendencies to gravitate towards extreme measures. As he felt that his wife was taking the side of the cat, the narrator, one day decided to try and murder the cat, but instead ended up