Alcoholism in “The Black Cat” Alcoholism is a common addiction known for the dependence on alcoholic beverages. Alcohol, along with any other drug, can distort someone’s reality and cloud their judgement. When alcohol is mixed with lunacy, it can be a deadly combination. Along with being psychotic, drinking causes mood swings, false confidence, dizziness, misconceptions, etc. In Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat”, he uses the mania of the narrator, being brought on by his use of alcohol, to portray a chilling ambiance of supernatural occurrences.
Throughout the story, the cat is used as a symbol to exemplify the narrator’s suspicion of the supernatural manifestations. The narrator is constantly aware of his cat’s actions. He personifies
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The narrator is never sober enough to understand why he brings the cat home with him. He is constantly drowning his thoughts. While he is mourning the death of his first cat, he drunkenly finds another cat like the one he lost. The narrator feels guilty for the death of his first cat and therefore is trying to replace that image of it. “a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it” (Poe 721). He hated the way it reminded him of Pluto and keeps trying to drink those thoughts …show more content…
While drinking alcohol, someone might become a little too confident in themselves, and that is exactly what the narrator does when the police come to question him. He believes his actions of hiding his wife were so perfectly planned that they would never discover her body. If the narrator would have been sober during the moments of his remodeling, he may have never left the cat behind. “Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless…In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall” (Poe 724). After the police hear the shriek from his cat, his world comes tumbling down and all the alcohol he has consumed hits him at
It is a fact of life that Alcoholism will distort the victim’s view of reality. With authors, they put parts of their personality and symptoms of their condition into their characters sometimes, flawed distortions included, with varying degrees
Anger, fear, and hatred all are characteristics of the evil. They are qualities that lurk in every man’s heart, lying dormant like a bat in a cave until the time is ripe to come out and hunt. Some people can hold the bat back, some let the bat go free, and for others the bat is overcome with its freedom that it forgets how to think. Those people, the ones who become drunk on their own freedom, are the ones who become insane. Using foreboding word choice and horrific imagery, Edgar Allen Poe in his short story “The Black Cat” describes the narrator’s diabolic actions to convey the message that untamed anger leads to insanity – even in the most collected individual.
It is said that, after the death of Virginia, Poe turned to the use of alcohol more frequently and his behavior became more erratic. Drinking large amounts of alcohol increases the risk fa...
Substance abuse plays a role in more than one of Poe's works. In the black cat alcohol drives the narrator to rip out his cats eye with with a pen and then hang the cat in guilt of what he had done. The narrator was a kind hearted man who loved animals and would do nothing to hurt them until he started to drink. He became an angrier person, always getting enraged with the people and creatures around him and his personality changed for the worse. Substance abuse changed him and drove him to be a different person than he really was. After killing the cat he felt little to no remorse for the deed he had committed and went back to his drinking and partying.Eventually his drinking led him to kill his wife, substance abuse changed him into a cold hearted man who could rationalize killing his wife and getting away with it.
Madness is mostly represented by both writers through a thing or object. In The Black Cat, eventually the cats become the madness as the protagonists mental state deteriorates. The second cat the protagonist found is the object that is used to represent his guilt for his brutal actions towar...
firstly, we can say that he had a good childhood. he loved his pets. but slowly as he grew old, may be because of some unfortunate events of failures, he started getting a feeling of emptiness in him and so he turned towards alcohol to fill this emptiness or to forget about all the bad things. the narrator also calls it a devil's act(feind intemperance). it was this alcohol that made him abuse his pets and slowly his wife.but when his own cat, who use to once love him, ignored him and scratched him in self defence he lost his mind. "The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame". by saying this he is discribing how he wasnt thinking properly. he had lost his rational thinking.he's lost himself(soul take its flight from his body)and no longer is in control of himself. and the alcohol that was running through him body was taking control of his body. this imagery explains perfectly what was going throught his mind at that moment. the readers can actually feel the insanity going on his mind. this is not something that a third person would have been able to discribe or experience and thus even the readers wouldnt have been able to understand his insane state of mind. so the 1st person narration plays an important role in explaning this plot of the story.
jealous of the cat. From the poem it tells us that the boy is insecure
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.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the single effect was the most important aspect of a short story, which everything must contribute to this effect. Poe’s gothic tale “The Black Cat” was written trying to achieve an effect of shocking insanity. In this first person narrative the narrator tells of his decline from sanity to madness, all because of an obsession with two (or possibly one) black cats. These ebony creatures finally drive him to take the life his wife, whose death he unsuccessfully tries to conceal.
He starts out by saying that he and his wife both have good hearts and both have a share of love for animals so that got pets of many different varieties. Though the narrator became quite fond of the cat more they name the cat Pluto, which is also the Roman mythological god of death and darkens. Little by little he goes in and out of madness, which some of it is alcohol induced because the narrator specifies that he would come in from his “flaunts” about town and get enraged with every pet and offered to beat his wife as well. It became really bad to where he would abuse the cat as well. One day when he picked the cat up, the cat bit him so in retaliation he gouged the cat 's eye out with a pen. The next day after he sobered up he became saddened and disgusted with his deed. The cat
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...
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.
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).
In The Black Cat, Poe creates a tale of strange confusion and morbid mystery. The tone is serious, as the narrator is writing his account of the events the day before he is going die, presumably for his crimes. The narrator, and the villain of the story, begins by saying he is "noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition." This statement is ironic, because as the story continues, we see he is anything but docile and humane. He becomes a driven man, passionate about getting rid of the cat that haunts him.
No matter which critical interpretation is used, it is evident that Poe's "The Black Cat" is a unique story that relies on key aspects, such as graphic violence and sensational imagery, to heighten the reader's perception toward the limits and depths of the human mind.