Everyone needs to believe things are going to get better, particularly when facing darker, evil, times. Take, for instance, famous stories by Edgar Allan Poe “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat.” Both stories relate to darkness and evil in Edgar Allen Poe’s “Black Cat” is no different from the “Tell Tale Heart” but in “The Black Cat” only darkness, evil, showing all these things (Edgar Allen Poe) using symbolism in different ways Alcohol, and endless dark (melancholy-unhappiness) under the narrator’s skin hinder the evil and darkness of the narrator in this story. And yet, every night when the narrator gets drunk he shows evil and darkness as it gets worse and worse as he drinks his illness becomes worse. In “The Black Cat” Edgar Allen Poe” uses the “Black Cat” named” Pluto” as darkness and evil throughout the text to symbolize evil. …show more content…
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
Comparing the Narration of The Cask of Amontillado and The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe
Poe carefully details the most brutal scenes of his stories, a quality shared by many of his works. Within “The Black Cat,” three situations stand to illustrate Poe’s message: when the narrator stabs out Pluto’s eye, when the narrator hangs Pluto, and when the narrator murders his wife. Before the first violent act described in the story, the narrator is known to be a drunkard who abused his wife. No matter how despicable this may be, he is still a somewhat ordinary man. Nothing majorly sets him apart from any another, relating him to the common man. However, his affinity towards alcohol, led to “the fury of a demon” (2) that came over him as he “grasped the poor beast by the throat” (2) and proceeded to “cut one of its eyes from the socket.” (2) Poe’s gruesome description of the narrator as a destructive demon, one who was awakened by alcohol, connects his behavior to the common working-class man. Alcohol is a legal drug that can be obtained by many, and when consumed in excess leads to the uncontrollable madness that ensued. The descriptions of the act plants fear into the hearts of the readers, especially those who have consumed alcohol, of ever becoming such a
The two short stories that I have chosen by Edgar Allan Poe are The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat. These two stories in particular have many things in common as far as technique goes, but they do have some significant differences between the two. In this paper I will try to compare and contrast these two short stories and hopefully bring something to the readers attention that wasn't there at first.
Poe uses symbolism in his story “The Black Cat,” to convey a message about the dangers of untreated mental illness and how people need to get actual psychological help before they commit heinous crimes. In “The Black Cat,” as the cat continues to be a part of Poe’s life, he eventually resigns to hang it from a tree for the sake of knowing that it is wrong, an action that continues to drive him into insanity. Pluto, Poe’s cat represents this insanity because besides being a black cat, which are typically known
The two short stories of “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black cat” by acclaimed author Edgar Allen Poe are a great example of what exemplifies the darkness a person can succumb to in certain situations. Both of these marvels share important realizations of thought and subconscious guilt’s to which are used as an example of how two different people in two different situations can have the same outcome in the way of committing murder. Anger and hatred become major factors in simultaneous tells. Thus, the topic for this discussion is to present the similarities and differences of these two short stories. Could there be more to what actually happens? Do both characters of these stories experience real supernatural events which cause them to lose
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.
Stephen King, creator of such stories as Carrie and Pet Sematary, stated that the Edgar Allan Poe stories he read as a child gave him the inspiration and instruction he needed to become the writer that he is. 2Poe, as does Stephen King, fills the reader 's imagination with the images that he wishes the reader to see, hear, and feel. 3His use of vivid, concrete visual imagery to present both static and dynamic settings and to describe people is part of his technique. 4Poe 's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story about a young man who kills an old man who cares for him, dismembers the corpse, then goes mad when he thinks he hears the old man 's heart beating beneath the floor boards under his feet as he sits and discusses the old man 's absence with the police. 5In "The Tell-Tale Heart," a careful reader can observe Poe 's skillful manipulation of the senses.
At first, the narrator of the story is very caring and loves animals; being with animals is “one of [his] principal sources of pleasure” (346). The narrator’s favorite pet is his large entirely black cat named Pluto. The narrator’s wife “made frequent allusion[s] to the ancient popular notion” that black cats were associated with bad luck, evil, witches, and the devil. Poe’s protagonist does not accept this superstition. People still associate black cats with bad luck, evil, witches, and the devil, so this foreshadows that something bad will happen in the story. The cat’s name, Pluto, increases the assumption that the narrator will have bad luck. In Greek mythology, Pluto was the god of the dead and ruler of the underground. The symbolism of the cat’s name can be used to show that in some way the cat will be involved with death.
Next, symbolism is always an integral part of any Poe story. The most obvious of symbolic references in this story is the cat’s name, Pluto. This is the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto contributes to a strong sense of hell and may even symbolize the devil himself. Another immensely symbolic part of “The Black Cat” is the title itself, since onyx cats have long connoted bad luck and misfortune. The most amazing thing about the symbolism in this story or in any other of Poe’s is that there are probably many symbols that only Poe himself ever knew were in his writings.
Edgar Allen Poe’s a genius of innovation. He uses the ideas that were common concerns of the time to revolve around in his short stories. Edgar Allen Poe grew up in a rough time when both his parents died, 1811. At a young age Poe was placed with a foster family in which he was treated without any respect. He took the ideas of mental illness to a sophisticated example in his short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” “The Tell Tale Heart” is written in the gothic style that helps establish the surreal theme. Poe’s whole purpose in writing short story is to address the idea of mental illness which he portrays in his main character. Through his writing of the short story “A Tell Tale Heart” he addresses the idea that criminals were getting away with the idea pf insanity as there escape.
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,
Poe was a man filled with compassion and whenever he lost a loved one it impacted him greatly. Examples of this are shown in his writings: The Raven and The Black Cat. In the poem The Raven there is a narrator who speaks his lost love, Lenore. This is very likely a reference to his beloved wife, Virginia. Virgina died and this was devastating for Poe, he really wants her back in life as does the narrator with Lenore. As well as the theme of loss of loved ones being shown in The Raven it is also shown in The Black Cat. In The Black Cat the narrator has many animals. He favors one of these animals, a cat named pluto, more than the others. He loses Pluto but only because of his own actions. After he cut the creature’s eye out, Pluto no longer
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.
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. ...
The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man's eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed 'perfect'; crime. People tend to think that insane persons are beyond the normal realm of reason shared by those who are in their right mind. This is not so; guilt is an emotion shared by all humans. The most demented individuals are not above the feeling of guilt and the havoc it causes to the psyche. Poe's use of setting, character, and language reveal that even an insane person feels guilt. Therein lies the theme to The Tell Tale Heart: The emotion of guilt easily, if not eventually, crashes through the seemingly unbreakable walls of insanity.