The Correlation Between Alcoholism and Brutality
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat (1849), is a dark short story about a man who quickly turns violent after he begins drinking alcohol. In the story, the narrator (who not only loves animals, but also has many pets) impulsively cuts out his beloved cat’s (Pluto’s) eye. After this ghastly offense, the narrator gets more violent and ends up murdering his innocent wife, hiding her body in the wall, and getting caught by the police; which, as a result, causes him to go to prison and be hanged for his villainous crimes. This short story illustrates that alcohol often makes individuals violent and aggressive.
Alcohol turns people brutal and hostile. A passage from The National Institute on Alcohol
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Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) says that “Up to 86 percent of homicide offenders, 37 percent of assault offenders, 60 percent of sexual offenders, up to 57 percent of men and 27 percent of women involved in marital violence, and 13 percent of child abusers were drinking alcohol at the time of their offense.”(NIAAA 1) This excerpt shows that often times men and women convicted of crimes were drinking alcohol at the time; showing that alcohol can make certain people aggressive and violent. In Poe’s short story The Black Cat, the narrator says “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.”(Poe 1-3); showing that after becoming an alcoholic the speaker’s personality changes drastically and negatively. In other words, he begins to stop caring about other’s feelings, he becomes angered easily, and turns violent. In The Black Cat (1849), the narrator turns violent after he begins drinking.
In the beginning of the story, the narrator is happy, caring, loves animals, and loves his wife. He says “...and never was so happy as when I was feeding and caressing him.” (Poe 1); the narrator talks about how his pet Pluto makes him very happy and he loves him, the narrator also says “Pluto- this was the cat’s name- was my favorite pet and playmate.” (Poe 1) this shows that the narrator of the story loved his cat, Pluto. Due to the fact that the narrator began drinking, the narrator turns evil, cruel, dark, and murderous. In the story the narrator states, “The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and most patient of sufferers.” (Poe 5) these lines from The Black Cat demonstrates that after he started drinking alcohol frequently he became abusive to his wife, saying that she was the most usual of sufferers; meaning that she was one who he usually took his anger out on. Also these lines from the story show that the narrator had turned more hateful and is also very impulsive when he became an
alcoholic. After the narrator becomes an alcoholic, the narrator can not control his anger. In the story, the narrator impulsively kills his beloved Pluto and when he goes to kill the other mysterious cat he kills his wife- whom he also loved. On top of this, the narrator is remorseless. After he murdered his wife, the narrator said “I quivered not a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence.”; this quotation shows that the alcoholic narrator had no remorse and was careless after he had murdered his wife. All in all, alcohol often makes certain individuals violent. In The Black Cat (1849) by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator becomes an alcoholic and brutally murders his cat and wife out of drunken impulse. Also, many statistics show that most serious crimes committed by men and women occur while they are intoxicated. Studies show that around 17.6 million people (one in every twelve adults) suffer from alcohol abuse along with several million more people who are involved in dangerous, binge drinking patterns that often lead to alcohol dependence and health problems related to alcoholism.
Substance abuse plays a role in more than one of Poe's works. In the black cat alcohol drives the narrator to rip out his cats eye with with a pen and then hang the cat in guilt of what he had done. The narrator was a kind hearted man who loved animals and would do nothing to hurt them until he started to drink. He became an angrier person, always getting enraged with the people and creatures around him and his personality changed for the worse. Substance abuse changed him and drove him to be a different person than he really was. After killing the cat he felt little to no remorse for the deed he had committed and went back to his drinking and partying.Eventually his drinking led him to kill his wife, substance abuse changed him into a cold hearted man who could rationalize killing his wife and getting away with it.
In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allen Poe scrutinizes the ideas of insanity and guilt. The narrator is unreliable because he acts as if he has mental illnesses and other various problems. He is a man who abuses alcohol and also has a cat that he believes is out to get him, though the animal has never done anything to him. In “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, The narrator is insane and therefore not guilty because he cannot control the choices he makes based on mental illness.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat” the narrator depicts his life as he is in his last days before his death sentence for the crimes he committed. In Poe’s violent story, many relationships are present such as his relationship with his pets, mostly his cat Pluto and his wife. Many critics say that Poe’s short story is an allegory for marriage and domesticity which can be proven through these relationships.
In "The Black Cat," the author, Edgar Allan Poe, uses a first person narrator who is portrayed as a maniac. Instead of having a loving life with his wife and pets, the narrator has a cynical attitude towards them due to his mental instability as well as the consumption of alcohol. The narrator is an alcoholic who takes out his own insecurities on his family. It can be very unfortunate and in some cases even disastrous to be mentally unstable. Things may take a turn for the worst when alcohol is involved, not only in the narrator's case, but in many other cases as well. Alcohol has numerous affects on people, some people may have positive affects while others, like the narrator in "The Black Cat," may have negative affects like causing physical and mental abuse to those he loved. The combination of the narrator's mental instability along with the consumption of alcohol caused the narrator to lose control of his mind as well as his actions leading him to the brink of insanity. Though the narrator is describing his story in hopes that the reader feels sympathy towards him, he tries to draw the attention to his abuse of alcohol to demonstrate the negative affects that it can take on your life as well as destroy it in the end.
Furthermore, Poe’s plot development added much of the effect of shocking insanity to “The Black Cat.” To dream up such an intricate plot of perverseness, alcoholism, murders, fire, revival, and punishment is quite amazing. This story has almost any plot element you can imagine a horror story containing. Who could have guessed, at the beginning of the story, that narrator had killed his wife? The course of events in “The Black Cat’s” plot is shockingly insane by itself! Moreover, the words in “The Black Cat” were precisely chosen to contribute to Poe’s effect of shocking insanity. As the narrator pens these he creates a splendidly morbid picture of the plot. Perfectly selected, sometimes rare, and often dark, his words create just the atmosphere that he desired in the story.
In the short story “The Black Cat”, Poe starts introducing the protagonist as a man in jail who is awaiting his death for the crime he has committed. The man used to always be joyful and loving, but with the power of alcohol, the man became abusive to his animals and wife. Eventually, he kills his cat and is being haunted by a similar yet more mysterious
The narrator usually is telling the story almost like he is talking to someone, that someone being the readers. Poe sets up “Black Cat” with the narrator telling the readers he is not mad but then his story tells the exact opposite. Poe writes very Gothic style fiction in which Poe 's characters suffer from self-destruction. In the settings in “Black Cat” the narrator has already destroyed himself due to his alcoholism which he calls it a disease. As Poe uses keen detail on how the narrator goes into madness, readers see the narrator at the end as he tells that he is finally able to rest. The narrator says “It did not make its appearance during the night and thus for one night at least, since the introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept.” (700). He is able to rest because of the cat is not there to taunt him. Though he killed his wife it’s the fact that the beast, a name he calls the cat, is not there so he is able to have a great nights rest for the next 3 days. He follows up that quote with “The second and third day passes, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed a freeman. The monster in terror had fled the premises forever” (700)! He has paranoia because of the cat. The cat was unlike Pluto because the cat showed him affection as later on in the years due to abuse Pluto ran away from the narrator. He finds it strange that the cat looks like Pluto, with the gouged eye and all,
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying and grotesque. “The Black Cat is one of the most powerful of Poe’s stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust” (Quinn).
Edgar Allan Poe for many years has confused people with his writings. Poe has put a very deep and analytical thought process in his writings. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are developed using techniques such as symbolism, imagery, and figurative language.
The narrator in “The Black Cat” first believes that the black cat is evil as his drinking problem worsens, he believes the cat is evil and causes him to do bad things to his wife and animals. The narrator blames the cat for his current state and even kills his beloved cat Pluto. In the story “The Black Cat,” Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery and specific details to symbolize darkness and evil. The narrator was a happy man he like his animals, and loved his wife he got a cat named “Pluto” “He was very large and beautiful animal; he was black black all over and very intelligent”(Poe 1). Conclusion: In the short story “The Black Cat” “Edgar Allen Poe uses The Black cat as named pluto as a symbolic representation of darkness and
“The Black Cat”, written by Edgar A. Poe, has been called “one of the most powerful of Poe’s stories” with a horrific element that just barely “stops short of the wavering line of disgust”. Originally published in 1843 in the United States Saturday Post, this Gothic tale is perhaps also one of Poe’s most extensively analyzed pieces. (Cambell33) Much diversity is seen in the interpretations offered. The black cats are variously conceptualized as symbolic of the narrator’s wife, manifesting the supernatural, representing the narrator’s “intemperance and lost docility”, and reflecting some rapidly diminishing noble facet of the tale-teller’s character or conscience. The narrator himself is described by various analysts as insane, a liar, and
A pattern in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is the reliability and sanity of the narrator being deteriorated through the use of connotative language. Poe’s narrator is first-person, he communicated the sequence of events from his perspective to the reader. For a narrator to be unreliable, their personal bias must corrupt the accuracy of information being relayed. Connotative language encompasses the unspoken emotional implications and underlying contexts of a descriptive word. This connotative language pattern is used in reference to the cat on multiple occasions; the first time the narrator attacks his cat, upon realizing his second cat is beginning to resemble the first, and after he murders his wife. The pattern of increasing negative
In “The Black Cat,” Poe makes sanity, or the lack thereof, an important element in the story. When the narrator writes of his experience, “his feeling for his wife was too weak to prevent his murdering her” (Poe, Masterplots 233). In the story, the narrator says he killed his cat, adopted another similar to the first, and when it tripped him, killed his wife as she tried to intervene. Reading the story, it is easy to see how the narrator slips into madness. For example, in the beginning of the story, the
Have you ever red a scary story that made you shiver down your spine, well this man wrote them all the time, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was born on January 19, 1809 he died on October 7 1849. His life influenced his writing in ways like his addictions,Loved ones dying because of tuberculosis, finally His madness/ insanity.
One of the staples of Poe's writing is the dramatic effect it has on the reader. Poe is known for his masterful use of grotesque, and often morbid, story lines and for his self-destructive characters and their ill-fated intentions. "The Black Cat" is no different from any of his other stories, and thus a Pragmatic/Rhetorial interpretation is obviously very fitting. If Pragmatic/Rhetorical criticism focuses on the effect of a work on its audience, then "The Black Cat" serves as a model for all other horror stories. One of the most intriguing aspects Poe introduces into the story is the black cat itself. The main character initially confesses a partiality toward domestic pets, especially his cat. Most readers can identify with an animal lover, even if they themselves are not. It is not long though before the reader learns of the disease that plagues the main character - alcoholism. Again, the reader can identify with this ailment, but it is hard to imagine that alcoholism could be responsible for the heinous actions made by the main character. In a drunken rage the main character cuts out one of the cat's eyes with a pen knife, and act at which he even shudders. Then, only after the cat's slow recovery from that attack, does the man hang the cat from the limb of a tree. ...