Insanity In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe is a thrilling short story that displays a human's capacity for evil. Coinciding with the use of alcohol, there are many inhumane actions that can result. In this short story, there are mental and physical consequences for the narrator due to one incident. It also parallels many lessons and themes with it along the way. Furthermore, the mysterious and peculiar actions tie in with the arrogance and insanity of the narrator. Many of Poe’s stories have significance, but this one contributes to actual human morals and behavior portrayed in literature and on a global scale.

The story begins by the narrator convincing himself of his sanity, while he starts reminiscing about his past. He explains how he married

his wife and a young age and they both had a love for animals. Furthemore, there was a black cat named Pluto that he particularly favored out of all the animals he once contained. Due to alcohol, the narrator begins to mistreat his animals and also his wife. One night he returned home drunk and became irrationally angry with Pluto, accusing the cat of avoiding him. So the narrator takes his pocketknife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyeballs. The next morning the narrator wakes up with regret for what he has done, he no longer can handle seeing the cat, so he hangs it from a tree. Later that night the narrator comes home to his house burnt to the ground and on one of the walls is a burn that looks like a cat being hanged. Over the following months he is flooded with feelings of anguish for what happened.
Then one night after getting drunk, the narrator finds a black cat that resembled Pluto, but had a splash of white fur.

Furthermore, he brings the cat home to his wife and in time she adores it. The narrator becomes paranoid when he thinks the cat’s white splash looks like a gallow. One night, he trips over the cat when walking downstairs and becomes irate. He grabs an axe to hit the cat, but his wife protects the cat, so the narrator hits her in the head with the axe. Furthermore, he hides her body behind the wall of the basement, unable to find the cat after. On the fourth day after the murder, cops arrive to look around his house. As they are looking the narrator becomes arrogant about the craftsmanship of his house, calling it sturdy and knocking on the wall. In reply to the knock, there is a loud scream behind the wall, the cops break down the wall, revealing the wife’s body with the missing cat on

it.
The Black Cat has had a large impact on literature subsequently. The story expresses a contrast between real and the paranormal. These same plot themes can be seen in many novels and movie scripts to date. Furthermore, these acts of literature can be portrayed through horror or romance, there are no boundaries, as displayed in The Black Cat. It supplies the concept of a plot twist to writers, allowing them to cause the same unexpected effect on the viewers.
Behaviors from the story can be seen in humans from all around the world.

The narrator conducts his actions as a result of being intoxicated. In many cultures around the globe, the effects and use of alcohol can be examined. On most occasions when a person is in the spotlight for being intoxicated it’s not for good behavior. In The Black Cat, the narrator commits all of his resentful actions while or after the using alcohol. These include, cutting out the first cat's eyeball and hanging it. Furthermore, when he was overwhelmed with rage and killed his wife with an axe. Edgar Allan Poe is mainly trying to conclude that being out of the right state of mind leads to mishandled

mistakes.
The author uses the sanity of the narrator to guide the reader into the developing plot. Poe was an expert in attracting the reader into his stories, often with the use of crimes or mentality of the narrator. As seen in The Black Cat, there are many minor actions that develop into major lapses of judgement. The lapse of judgement by the narrator displays Poe’s main theme, human capacity for evil. This story can show the reader what not to do while in the narrator’s situations, which in retrospect contributes to many moralistic behaviors of literature and humans worldwide to this day. Overall, The Black Cat breaks down walls to show the true understanding of romantics in society.