Analysis Of The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

The Bible claims that all men are born in sin,even though some seem to be born pure and just. Yet how we are born does not reflect our decisions later in life. It is possible, and more favorable to live the rest of your life in purity, but some chose to delve deep into the pit of sin, allowing for body and mind to be consumed. As life began for the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” he became a docile and humane man with a love of animals and people alike. After years of slowly succumbing to a reliance on alcohol, he destroys his and his wives lives in a series of events caused by his large cat Pluto. Through this tragic telling of a man’s spiral towards insanity, Edgar Allan Poe uses dramatic syntax formulated with concise yet

In this particular story, he uses his diction to highlight the increasing insanity of the narrator. The dramatism of each sentence slowly increases flowing from a simple tender sentence: “With these I spent most of my time, and was never so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (1), to a more "dark: “But may god shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend.”(6). As he murders his cat Pluto, he describes it in a peculiar way. Instead of describing the act in detail, he conveys his emotions and reasoning for the offense in both the denotation and connotation of his writing. The only description of the cat’s death is “I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (Poe 2), which is not only purely denotative but not connotative at all. This absence of any deeper emotion highlights this act due its proximity of phrases such as “bitterest remorse at my heart” and “ beyond the reach of infinite mercy” (2). He wants the reader to believe that he was conflicted in his actions, but goes on to complete the action without any hesitation. By lacking any sort of emotional diction while describing the action, it denounces the regret that his thoughts claim and further shows that he has lost his