Elements Of Fear In The Black Cat

The Black Cat, a story written by famous horror author, Edgar Allen Poe exhibits all five elements of horror genre; fear, surprise, suspense, mystery, and spoilers. Edgar Allen Poe wrote stories to play on the fears of readers. Poe grew up in the 1800’s. As a child, he faced many fears himself as he grew up poor and watched his family die from disease. Poe was the first American to earn a living writing. Although, his life was cut short when he died at the young age of 48.

Edgar Allan Poe a true literary genius exhibits fear better than anyone in the story of The Black Cat, Poe understands how to prey on the element of fear. As the text states “The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvelous. There was a rope around the animal’s neck.” Poe is describing the describing the way that the once dead black cat has resurrected back into his home, the narrator emphasizes the true gut wrenching fear felt by Poe. The narrator is able to accurately place fear in not only the mind of the reader, but deeper as the reader should feel such pain as almost a cloak or veil separating what is fiction into a seeming reality.

The idea of surprise is most emphasized when Poe meets the seemly familiar faced cat, with one clear difference Poe writes ” It was a black cat a very large one fully as large as Pluto and resembling him in every aspect, but one Pluto had not a white hair on his body, but this cat had a very large white patch in the breast area.” this is an ingenious way capture the full effect that surprise plays back into the key element of horror. Surprise is such an understated element of horror, but without this small detail the black cat would have been so boring and