Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” is a marvelous depiction of how alcohol can be destructive to people’s lives. In the story, the narrator commits multiple heinous crimes all after the consumption of alcohol. From the crimes he have committed, we can say that alcoholism has caused the narrator to lose parts of his sanity. Furthermore, it has also resulted in his enjoyment in being cruel and evil, in other words, known as “diabolical evil.” After psychoanalysing the story, it is believed that there are many reasons why the narrator might behave like that. Therefore, we can say that his wishful impulses and his repression of those impulses are reasons why he kills the cat and his wife who both love him so much. The narrator of the story slowly progresses into an evil being due to the influence of alcohol. At the beginning, he and his wife love the company of their many pets. The narrator is especially attached to his black cat, Pluto, who always follows him around the house …show more content…
Basically, it is the concept that evil can progress through time and at the end reach the point of no return, such as how the narrator came to be. From this article, we can infer that the reason the narrator chooses to be evil is because of his repression from his childhood. At first, we can see that he acts normal and shows love to Pluto. Yet, he turns to drinking which can be a way for him to forget the misery that he suffers. The misery might be his repressed emotions from his childhood. These repressed emotions results in his wishful impulses and soon leads in his complete evil and joy in
It is a fact of life that Alcoholism will distort the victim’s view of reality. With authors, they put parts of their personality and symptoms of their condition into their characters sometimes, flawed distortions included, with varying degrees
The narrator talks about his life; he explains his love for animals, especially his black cat named Pluto, and his marriage to a kind wife. His car is described as a completely black and healthy animal who deeply loves the narrator, a contrast to his own drunken and moody demeanor. The name “Pluto” in itself is a method of foreshadowing, as Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld, implicating future death. Pluto’s relation to witchcraft, as noted by the narrator’s wife who “made frequent allusion to the ancient notion which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise”(1) alludes to the supposedly supernatural events that occur in the story. Roberta Reader, while analyzing the significance of Pluto, theorizes that the cat symbolizes the narrator’s attitude towards his cat “as something dark, fearful, and unknown” (Reader 1). The narrator from that start is filled with superstition and fury that he has repressed. His beatings and his acrimony have pushed others away from him, so he is unnerved by his one friend that he has managed to
It is said that, after the death of Virginia, Poe turned to the use of alcohol more frequently and his behavior became more erratic. Drinking large amounts of alcohol increases the risk fa...
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.
Everyone hits rock bottom or hits that breaking point in their lives. For some people, it may be sooner than others. Our actions can be justified in some ways, where it depends on the person’s mental state, physical state, or emotional state. Additionally, we always try to find a reason why our actions may be perceived to be right in our own eyes. In “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates the concept of morality through the state of madness, horrific narration and strong symbolism.
firstly, we can say that he had a good childhood. he loved his pets. but slowly as he grew old, may be because of some unfortunate events of failures, he started getting a feeling of emptiness in him and so he turned towards alcohol to fill this emptiness or to forget about all the bad things. the narrator also calls it a devil's act(feind intemperance). it was this alcohol that made him abuse his pets and slowly his wife.but when his own cat, who use to once love him, ignored him and scratched him in self defence he lost his mind. "The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame". by saying this he is discribing how he wasnt thinking properly. he had lost his rational thinking.he's lost himself(soul take its flight from his body)and no longer is in control of himself. and the alcohol that was running through him body was taking control of his body. this imagery explains perfectly what was going throught his mind at that moment. the readers can actually feel the insanity going on his mind. this is not something that a third person would have been able to discribe or experience and thus even the readers wouldnt have been able to understand his insane state of mind. so the 1st person narration plays an important role in explaning this plot of the story.
Everybody has evil and even the most amiable people have the ability to become criminals. A writer known for his dark style of writing and mysterious tales believes that all humans have the potential to do this, but the majority of them control the urge. This writer is Edgar Allan Poe, who shares his opinion of the human race through his short stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat”. In these stories he shows how humans misuse alcohol, become perverse, and eventually summon their inner evil. Poe implies that all humans possess this evil and when summoned it will torture and soon destroy everything they have.
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.
Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.
The presence of the two cats in the tale allows the narrator to see himself for who he truly is. In the beginning the narrator explains that his “tenderness of heart made him the jest of his companions”. (251) He also speaks of his love for animals that has remained with him from childhood into manhood. However, Poe contradicts this description of the narrator when he seems to become annoyed with the cat that he claims to love so much. While under the influence of alcohol the narrator is “fancied that the cat avoided his presence”(250) and as a result decides to brutally attack the cat. This black cat symbolizes the cruelty received by slaves from whites. The narrator not only “deliberately cuts one of the cats eyes from the sockets” (250) but he also goes on to hang the cat. Once the narrator successfully hangs the cat the tale begins to take a very dark and gothic-like turn. The racism and guilt of the narrator continues to haunt him once he has killed the black cat. Th...
A common theme that is seen throughout many of Edgar Allan Poe’s text, is madness. Madness that will make the whole world turn upside down and around again. Madness that takes over somebody’s life. Madness and eye imagery is present in both “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart” by Poe where madness is at first a fairy tale but then ends with a crash back to reality.Both stories share components of murder and insanity, and are very similar, not at first glance but if looked at more closely.
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).
No matter which critical interpretation is used, it is evident that Poe's "The Black Cat" is a unique story that relies on key aspects, such as graphic violence and sensational imagery, to heighten the reader's perception toward the limits and depths of the human mind.
He and his wife have many pets, including a large, beautiful black cat named Pluto. This cat is especially fond of the narrator and vice versa. Their mutual friendship lasts for several years, until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night, after coming home completely intoxicated, he believes the cat to be avoiding him. When he tries to seize it, the panicked cat bites the narrator, and in a fit of rage, he seizes the animal, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket, and deliberately gouges out the cat's