Pluto Had to Die

Often times within literary history, authors have chosen to rely on unreliable narrators to add a veil of mysticism and sympathy to their twisted plots. Numerous authors attempt to make the reader believe that the unreliable narrator is in desperate need of compassion and understanding; however, Poe uses unreliable narrators to twist about the reality of the tale just enough to make the reader doubt everything within the story. This technique, employed by Poe in many of his works, adds a layer of mystery and uncertainty that becomes expected within his unique storylines. No author knows “twisted plots” more so than the morbid and abnormal Edgar Allen Poe. In his story, “The Black Cat, Poe uses an unreliable narrator to intensify the story by making the plotline doused with sporadic moments of truth in order to truly create a fine line between what is the truth and what is not.

The story, written roughly 6 years before Poe died, is one of the more prominent examples of an unreliable narrator within Poe’s collection. The reader, in the beginning of the story, is told by the narrator himself that he is thought to be an unreliable narrator, by way of his assumed mental instability.

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence ().

The unnamed narrator states that he is not expecting anyone to believe the extraordinarily strange story that he is about to recount; however, he proceeds to lay out the events as he saw them. Further into the story the reader finds out exactly why the narrator is not to be trusted – he is an alcoholic. The narrator begins fighting his inner demons a...

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... blindingly illuminated that his perceived reality was not equal to that of actual reality. The unreliable narrator shows the readers just how out of touch with reality he has been at the resolution of the story; the narrator effectively hands himself over for murder of his wife simply because of his spite for the black cat.

Overwhelmingly, truth was lost within this unreliable narrator’s world. It is a repeated theme throughout many of Poe’s works that a guilty conscious is one of the most detrimental things a person can possess. Often times, within his stories, the main character dies due to his or her guilty conscious and “The Black Cat” is no different. The narrator’s warped sense of reality was ultimately the reason for his demise. Poe seems to be warning readers, through his numerous works, that it may or may not be a good thing to have a guilt conscious.