Preview

The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
310 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe
In the short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, the author made choices when it came to structuring the text like diction & setting the right mood. This helped to contribute to the story’s overall structure and aesthetic impact. The main character goes through a series of changes unexplainable to both him and the reader brought upon by him bringing along a new cat named Pluto. The author used descriptive language, contrast and contradiction & set a mysterious tone to build upon the story’s structure.
Descriptive language helped contribute to build upon the story’s structure. The word choice helped present a vivid image of Pluto to the reader. An example of this was used in paragraph 1 page two, “This latter was a remarkably large

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Although Edgar Allen Poe couldn’t apply a visual representation of his work, his written piece applies many literary techniques to provoke a similar effect on the reader and prevents the narration from seeming monotonous . The most notable technique was the variation of sentence length and structure which intensifies the story and gives the reader a sense of instability and upredictability in the narrator.…

    • 64 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Today I’ll be comparing the Narration of “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. Edgar Allen Poe is the author of many great pieces of literature, using his narrators to explain situations that are going on in their life. The narrators of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Black Cat" both lead characters love for man’s inhumanity to man and animals through horrific murders.…

    • 1550 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    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…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

    • 5261 Words
    • 22 Pages

    The unnamed narrator is wearily perusing an old book one bleak December night when he hears a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is merely a visitor, and he awaits tomorrow because he cannot find release in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The rustling curtains frighten him, but he decides that it must be some late visitor and, going to the door, he asks for forgiveness from the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opens the door, he sees and hears nothing except the word "Lenore," an echo of his own words.…

    • 5261 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A man’s lost love that might drive him mad. “The Raven”, written by Edgar Allen Poe, is believed to be symbolic of his own life. But it seems to me that it shows that Poe was also either Psychic or a time traveler. This poem seems to predict Poe’s own future. Poe, an alcoholic, who because of his drinking lost good jobs had a bright bright spot in his life, his wife Virginia. Virginia was his cousin; he married her when he was 27 and she was thirteen. She only lived two years after “The Raven” was published. I believe “The Raven” was written as a prediction of Poe’s sorrow after he lost Virginia.…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story, “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator was sane during his wife's murder. The narrator had several pets for many years and was happy to be with his wife, until he started to abuse alcohol. His alcohol abuse led to the abuse of his pets and wife, eventually leading to his wife’s “murder,”which is what the narrator called it when he committed the crime. Alcoholism does not make a man insane, the narrator knew what he was doing and he knew that it was wrong, unlike a person who suffers with the M’Naghten Rule. (Defendant either did not understand what they did, or failed to distinguish right from wrong, because of a “diseased mind”)…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Black Cat Mood

    • 2423 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The setting of "The Black Cat" creates the mood of terror and fear evident in the setting of a Gothic romance. The establishment of an emotional atmosphere of mystery and fear is very important in creating the mood of the Gothic romance. The somber, ominous setting of a Gothic romance story contributes to the formation of a mood of terror and danger by sustaining a "general air of mystery and fear" (Steeves 253). Likewise, "The Black Cat" contains an eerie setting that sustains an emotional mood of terror. One example of an eerie setting that demonstrates the mood of terror in the story is when the narrator's house burns down. The fire comes the night after the narrator is possessed by an evil impulse causing him to hang the one-eyed black cat he so dreads. Following the devastating fire only a single plaster section of a wall remains "where many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of [the wall] with very minute and eager attention" and the narrator is filled with feelings of "wonder and [. . .] terror" as he sees the silhouette of the cat (Poe 143). The setting with the crowd of bystanders looking carefully at a mysterious silhouette on the only standing wall of the house invites the narrator's own curiosity and fear of the silhouette's likeness to the dreaded black cat. Thus, the setting of the only standing wall with the mysterious silhouette in "The Black Cat" inspires emotions such as mystery and fear that define the mood of the Gothic romance. Also, multiple threats to the stability of the narrator keep the dark mood of the Gothic romance alive in "The Black Cat." In a Gothic romance, the mood of terror is found in the "unbroken succession of threats to the narrator's peace, safety, and honor" (Steeves 252). Likewise in "The Black Cat" a series of threats to the narrator's…

    • 2423 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poe's use of characterization in the stories ‘The Black Cat”, “the Tell-Tail Heart”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”, allow Poe to demonstrate the madness that his characters typically go through. For example in “the Tell-Tale Heart” on page one Poe writes, “True!--…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author shows these struggles through the use of metaphors, irony, and symbolism. First, Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to show the consequences the narrator faces. The black cat, Pluto, symbolizes bad luck. “I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (Poe 6). The name Pluto comes from the god of the underworld, and symbolizes…

    • 272 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe has been recognized for his gothic style techniques and literary achievements for many years. One of his famous poems is known for its dark internal rhyme and rhythms of the sound of words. This would be a fashion of describing the heart-ache of a man who lost his love and questioning a raven. This would be the simple form of this poem that would string out the complex structure of the ‘The Raven’.…

    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Black Cat” is narrated by a man on the day before he is to be put to death for the crime of murdering his wife. He can be considered an unreliable narrator. This is because his deeds do not match his words. He states, “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition” and “I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets” (514). He then gouges the eye out and later kills the family pet, a cat, in cold blood by hanging it from a tree. He states that he is not mad. Yet he commits the deeds of a madman. The narrator uses flashback in his description of the events leading up to his execution. Poe uses foreshadowing to hint or give clues of future events. Some of his use of foreshadowing is subtle. At other times it is more obvious.…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The first short story to be summarized is “The Black Cat”. In the beginning of the story, we learn that the unnamed narrator is in jail and going to die the very next day and wants to set his story straight. From the day he was born, he loved animals and has lots of them. He expresses that taking care of his animals and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. He gets married and finds out that his wife loves animals just as much as he does.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When I was younger, I went to a haunted house and I was so excited, and also scared because of things I have heard from people’s experiences. In “The Fall of The House of Usher” Poe talks about fear, but he doesn’t focus on the good things, only the bad. This paper will describe how imagination overcomes reason. Imagination can invoke people’s fear by making them over think situations.…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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."…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Another common theme between the two stories is struggle- trying to get out of a situation when you just cannot. In The Black Cat, the narrator tries to escape from the guilt of killing Pluto, but cannot, so he ends up killing his wife. He could not do anything to stop himself from behaving the way he did. This is extremely similar to The Fall of the House of Usher where Roderick Usher is trying to escape from the mental illness that he has. Asking his childhood friend to visit, he had hoped that it could help bring him out of his shell, maybe just miraculously cure him, but it does not. In the end, just like the narrator in The Black Cat, he ends up loosing something extremely precious- his life. Poe also uses Single Unifying Effect in both stories. Five examples of him using it in The Black Cat are: The voice from the tomb (the scream); the death of Pluto, his first cat; the ruining of his house; the murder of his wife and the image of the…

    • 318 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays