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Psychological conflict in literature
Psychological conflict in literature
Psychological conflict in literature
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“And thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquility slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul.” Edgar Allen Poe, a famous writer, wrote the short Story The Black Cat. The narrator in this story is insane because of the following reasons, he kills his wife without an inch of remorse, kills the cat in cold blood, also, his acts of insanity.
In the story, the narrator has a sudden change. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.” The effects of his change is shown when the narrator comes him intoxicated, he imagined that the cat was avoiding him, he then grasped the cat by the neck and with a pen knife, he cut one of the cats eyes out. He writes out how horrified he was by his actions the next
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morning. The cat had recovered by this time, and was deliberately avoiding the narrator. The cat had continued to avoid him. The narrator grew irritated and irrational. This time, with and unfathomable longing of the soul to “offer violence..to do wrong for the wrong’s sake.” In cold blood, he slipped a noose around the cat’s neck and hung it from a tree branch, tears streamed down his face while he continued with the action. He is ashamed of his actions, but he knew he had to “Hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence.” The narrator has many acts of insanity in this story, but here is a few of them.As the narrator says in the beginning of the story “Mad indeed would I be to expect it...Yet, mad am I not and very surely do I not dream.” After he cold bloodedly kills the cat, his house burns up into flames, which he takes as retribution for killing the cat. The following day, he visited the ruins of the house and saw a crowd of people around. There was one wall standing that had recently been plastered, and on the wall was an engraved picture of a giant cat with a rope around its neck. The narrator's insane mind tried to rationalize an explanation for the picture of the giant cat on the wall. He believed that someone found the cat’s dead body, threw it into the house on fire to wake up the narrator, the falling of the walls, the burning of the house, the ammonia from the carcass were all signs and factors of the engraved image on the wall. The narrator also uses his drunken state as an excuse for killing the cat. Even though he feels guilty for his malevolent actions, being drunk should never be an excuse to kill someone. After he had killed the cat in cold blood, he was out after drinking, and he saw a cat that looked exactly like the cat they had; Pluto.
Except, this cat had spot of white on its chest. The cat became very loved at their house by him and his wife, but he eventually grew tired and irritated with the new cat. What made the irritation grow for the cat was that it had one eye missing, just like Pluto. As the narrator and his wife were walking into the cellar, the cat nearly tripped him, which enraged him even more He grabbed the axe to kill it, but his wife stopped him from doing so, he took his arm away from her grasp and then plunged it into her head. “Goaded, by the interference, into rage more than demonical, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain..This hideous murder accomplished.” With no remorse, he then proceeded to hid her body in the newly plastered wall. After he had discarded of her body, he then says that he had never slept better a day in his life. The narrator says, “And thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquility slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder on my
soul.” As we can see, the narrator is insane because he kills his wife without an inch of remorse, kills the cat in cold blood, also, his acts of insanity. It is clear to see that the narrator was a mad man, and had no remorse for his actions, except for killing the cat.
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.
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.
The short story the “Black Cat” begins with the narrator of the story telling his side of events that have occurred throughout his life. When first being introduced to the narrator you can tell something is off with him. The narrator is originally a well-put together man he has a wife and many of different animals but has a much greater love for one of his animals named Pluto a black cat. As the life of the narrator goes on he falls into a drinking problem he cant stop drinking and when he does drink he gets violent. One night when
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.
Poe starts off the short story by giving us insight into the unnamed narrator’s twisted mind. The narrator explains his desire and plans to kill the old
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.
Insanity is a common quality among Edgar Allen Poe’s narrators, however you can’t always tell if their stories are true because they’re all insane. In William Wilson, The Black Cat and The Raven the narrators are all unreliable as they only tell the stories they believe to be true. It is up to the reader to figure out which parts of these stories are real.
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,
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).
Although one particular pet catches the majority of the young man’s attention, an all-black cat named Pluto. With the decreasing of the man’s control toward the alcohol, he eventually submits into the illusions causing him to lash out in violent rages towards his animals and even his wife. An important scene that depicts this concept of illusions would be when the man’s house had caught up in flames and when the house had been extinguished the only part of the house that was left perfectly intact had a remarkable image of a cat with a rope around its neck. The young man was left curious and terrified as to if this were a coincidence or if there was a deeper meaning to this situation. It is let to be determined if it is possible that the young man is being deceived by his own mind throughout the entire short story.
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.
To his pleasure the cat followed it home and stayed with him, soon becoming his wife’s favorite. Before long, the man’s drunkenness started to take over, and he found himself slowly starting to loathe the animal. Although he hated this cat, he knew his wife was fond of it and he did not want the same outcome as before. Darkness and evil thoughts soon consumed him causing him to act unreasonably. Once he got mad at the cat disturbed the man again, he took an axe and lifted it up to the cat only to be restricted, by his wife, before killing it.