Edgar Allan Poe has a dark and unique writing style. This has set him apart from most writers for quite a long time. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is no exception. This dark, twisted story has many basic elements of horror and thorough character development that all add into the horror aspect of this short story. The characters add a major part into making this story a horror story. At first the narrator was a quiet and behaved soul. The story says, “My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions” He was an animal lover of all animals. The narrator says, “With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” As this shows, he was happiest when he was around them and thoroughly enjoyed these animals. He married young and also married an animal lover. They had many different animals together that they loved. However, he was especially fond of Pluto, their cat. However, he became more of an alcoholic than before and became violent towards his animals and wife. This character development is huge for this story because it shows how he became …show more content…
There are very many examples of this in the story including when the story says, “Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would of proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain.” Throughout this whole story, one would not of guessed that the narrator would end up murdering his wife over the cat. Turning the story around with something that is not expected is a common element of horror. They do this for the reader to experience shock and to be
“The Black Cat” is a short story about a man is dealing with alcohol problems, which cause him to lose his temper more frequently. One of the first cases of the man’s lashing out happens towards the beginning of the story. The man returns home, very intoxicated, and proceeds to cut one of the cat’s eyeballs out. Poe states “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” The use of deep description by Poe in this instance allows the reader to fully imagine the actions done by the man to the cat. He gives many small details like “grasped the poor beast by the throat,” to really readers to see what he wants them to. Additionally, as the story moves forward, the man is not done with the cat. He then proceeds to murder the cat he has already cut an eye out of. Poe explains “One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree.” Poe paints a striking picture for the reader to see, and to feel the full impact of the action taken in the story.
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
Another extraordinary tale by Edgar Allen Poe is, “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” recounts the story of an unnamed narrator with a selfless character. Loving animals, he and his wife have several pets, one of which being a black cat. The narrator and the cat grow very close and life for the narrator seems complete, until he beings drinking. Intoxicated by alcohol, the narrator becomes irritable and abusive. One day, that narrator, infur...
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.
A master of the human psyche with the ability to dissect it down to its most basic form, Edgar Allan Poe left the world with some of the darkest, most tortured characters in literature. His characters are not innately evil, or live with the intent to cause harm but instead are people that are living a seemingly normal life. Poe was able to tap into the human condition through characters who took their inner darkness to their chilling end. His stories and characters within them are fascinatingly removed from the lives of the ordinary man but with enough links to engage the reader to question the humanity (or inhumanity) in all of us. Poe’s The Black Cat (1843) takes the reader on such a journey, with a conclusion that leaves the reader confused and questioning how easily a person could fall so deeply into inhumanity under the simple influence of alcohol.
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.
What happens if our home is no longer safe? What if the people we love are no longer trustworthy and become violent? How do we escape such madness when every exit in the home seems walled up? Edgar Allen Poe taps into some of our deepest fears, using the genre of horror. In his short story, “The Black Cat”, Poe addresses the very real and scary consequences of addiction, mental illness and domestic abuse. The horrific effect that these have on the family slowly unfold as Poe unravels the mind of the protagonist. While the narrator, in this case the protagonist, slowly slips into insanity with the aid of his drink, his wife silently transforms in the background, from a passive victim of abuse, to a defender of the helpless and weak.
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.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark theme poems and short stories. When one does read one of Poe 's works the reader gets a glimpse of Poe 's reality. His uses of metaphors and dark themes have made him very popular. He writing style has Gothic themes as well as suspense and horror themes as well. His use of very dark metaphors cast a dark and gloomy presence that shows the reader the mind and world of the narrator telling the story. Edgar Allen Poe 's use of dark themes in “Black Cat” helped him convey the very dark nature of his works in which helped him shape the reality of the stories.
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...
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).
When reading The Black Cat, by Edgar Allan Poe, almost immediately you can sense the dark and shadowy nature of the work. Filled with mystery, death and the possibility of the supernatural, this short story is a work of Gothic Literature.
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. ...
Eine gute Diät ist wichtig für den korper, die Haut, die Haare und die Zähne. Das essen wie Milchprodukten, Obst, Fleisch und Kartoffeln enthalten Vitamine A, B und C. Man sollte gesund essen, zum Beispiel, man sollte viel Gemüse, Obst und Nüsse essen. Zu viel Zucker oder Fett ist schlecht für die Gesundheit. Um Gesund zu bleiben, sollte man viel Sport treiben und nicht rauchen. Nach Meiner Meinung bin ich nicht so Gesund weil ich ungesund esse, aber ich viel Sport treiben.