The Black Cat Analysis

Author Edgar Allan Poe is no stranger to the compelling literary language of horror, and he displays his comfort with the classic elements of the genre in his short story “The Black Cat”. This twisted tale is told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator, describing his blameless hand in the murder of his beloved cat and his wife. The deranged narrator tells his version of the horrific events, while trying to convince the reader that he is a sane man. In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe utilizes the narrator’s appeals to ethos and dramatic imagery to illustrate how the acceptance of a disturbed disposition can consume the sanity of the most docile man, and turn him into a violent monster, demonstrating that all humans are susceptible to the influence of evil. The narrator opens the story suddenly, speaking in a frenzied

She suggests that author Edgar Allan Poe intended “The Black Cat” to be written “from the standpoint of psychology rather than ethics” (Ki 1). Therefore, the narrator’s actions are not the center point of the story, but rather the sanity, or insanity, of the speaker. Poe does not wish to convey a lesson in morals, or to prompt a discussion of integrity; he wants the reader to delve into the complicated intricacies of a troubled mind. Poe constructs the mistrust between reader and narrator so that the reader is able to criticize the stability of the narrator and explore his heinous intentions. Wing-Chi Ki confirms that “despite his overall lack of normal ethics and good judgment, [the narrator] uses some reason and logic to avoid admissions of his mental abnormality” (2). It is, therefore, up to the reader to judge the narrator, and debate whether he is indeed a menacing psychopath or a man dealing with the aftermath of “an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects” (Poe