Alcoholism In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

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The Black Cat is a short story describing the events that take place after a normal man experiences the struggles of alcoholism which seemingly cause him to go insane and perform many unethical actions. The short story begins with the narrator who is situated in prison and he is discussing the unfortunate event he must partake in the following day. He continues his narrative by describing his downfall into a state of anguish fueled by alcohol and hate which drives him insane eventually causing him to murder his wife and pet. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” the titular cat is a symbol of the characters struggle with alcohol and his poor actions and hatred throughout the short story.
The overall tone and mood of the The Black Cat is dark …show more content…

The narrator has begun to go slightly insane and he does not care for people’s comments and opinion when he is in public or when he abuses his wife and pets. The narrator has started to see life in a different way now that he has become an alcoholic.
Wing-Chi Ki stated in an article, “In Poe's story, the narrator is a slave of the bottle, but wine also leads the narrator to master himself, to do evil in a disinterested manner, and to equate evil with the highest duty. The narrator's behavior implies the triumph of diabolical evil that advocates neither selfish calculation nor a clear ideological identification.”
In “The Black Cat,” the narrators drive to become an alcoholic and to mistreat his wife and animals coincides with the belief of diabolical evil. The narrator basically adopts this idea that evil should be the source of his incentives, therefore he begins to accept that he is not his normal self anymore and his drive consumes him constantly. He is driven to do these awful deeds and he does not feel bad about maltreating the animals and to justify this he simply says, “I knew myself no longer.” The narrator uses his struggle with alcohol and his hatred towards his wife and pets as a justification for his actions which characterizes him as an evil person. Alcohol plays a primary role in the collapse of the narrator's relationships with all of the people in his …show more content…

Throughout “The Black Cat,” the narrator’s personal relationships begin to disintegrate and his conflict concerning alcohol worsens. The actual black cat serves as a justification for the unfortunate events that take place in the short story. The narrator’s choice of negative words give off a dark tone for the short story by using dark imagery to frame the story. The narrator has become extremely abusive and hateful towards his family and pets and he is eventually driven insane most likely because he is an alcoholic. The narrators relationships with the people he is closest to quickly changes as he begins to struggle with alcohol more often and this is because he begins to dislike them and becomes hateful. Since the narrator is intoxicated more often than not the real question is whether or not there actually is a second black cat or just an imagined character

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