“I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe (Poe 285). In “The Island of the Fay,” Edgar Allan Poe discusses some of the quintessential elements of Romanticism. The feeling expressed toward nature, the “mortal sorrow and... death,” and the title itself in its reference to the supernatural (fairies) are all reasons why this specific example is a perfect piece of Romantic literature. Many of his works are the epitome of Romantic literature, including such diverse themes as sanity, admiration of nature, mystery, and the supernatural.
In “The Black Cat,” Poe makes sanity, or the lack thereof, an important element in the story. When the narrator writes of his experience, “his feeling for his wife was too weak to prevent his murdering her” (Poe, Masterplots 233). In the story, the narrator says he killed his cat, adopted another similar to the first, and when it tripped him, killed his wife as she tried to intervene. Reading the story, it is easy to see how the narrator slips into madness. For example, in the beginning of the story, the
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narrator says he “was noted for the docility and humanity of [his] disposition” (Poe 223). This contrasts sharply from later on when he recalls that he killed Pluto, his first cat, simply for “the spirit of perverseness” (Poe 225). This kind of contrast is not uncommon in Poe’s works, as he juxtaposes reason and the irrational, love and hate, good and evil, and sobriety and drunkenness. Sanity, one of the essential parts of Romanticism, is examined prominently in “The Black Cat.” Poe’s respect for and interest in nature is also a theme he uses.
He uses animals, such as the cats and other pets in “The Black Cat,” and the Raven in “The Raven,” as well as great detail in his descriptions of natural settings. One such example is in his poem “Dream-land,” where Poe writes about the amazing natural sights an adventurer encounters on his journey. “Bottomless vales and boundless floods,” Poe writes, “ / And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, / With forms that no man can discover, / For the dews that drip all over; / Mountains toppling evermore / Into seas without a shore” (Poe 968). “Dream-land,” among many other of Poe’s works, is a panegyric to the natural world. His dramatization and esteem for nature is typical of Romantic
literature. Poe’s short stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rôget,” and “The Purloined Letter” are early developments of the detective mystery subgenre of modern literature (Parker 1550). The stories are centered around detective Auguste Dupin, “a young gentleman... of an excellent... family” who investigates mysterious crimes (Poe 143). Since Poe was an influential Romantic writer, he was an avant garde write, setting the trend for others to write about fictional detectives which gave way to such beloved characters as Sherlock Holmes, Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple. The supernatural is also an essential part of Romantic literature that Poe is fond of writing of. Many of his short stories contain mystical elements, such as the talking Raven in “The Raven” and the haunted house in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” talks about the House in an extremely negative way that gives the house a supernatural and macabre feeling when he says he “can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium” (Poe 231). “The Black Cat” also has supernatural elements. After the narrator hangs Pluto, for example, “the narrator discovers on the only wall that remains standing [after a mysterious fire] the raised gigantic image... of a hanged cat” (Poe, Masterplots 232). This is obviously supernatural and can make the reader uneasy. The supernatural in Romantic literature was a device writers, including Poe, used to make their audiences feel fear or uneasiness. Edgar Allan Poe’s works that include themes like sanity, the natural world, mystery, and the supernatural, epitomize Romantic literature. Poe conflicts sanity and insanity to make each seem more extreme. He exaggerates the beauty of nature to induce feelings of awe and wonderment at the natural world. Poe used his influence, probably unknowingly, to create an entire subgenre of literature: detective fiction. Finally, his works had supernatural elements that give his readers a sense of grotesqueness. Edgar Allan Poe’s works are representative of Romantic literature, due to all of the shared components.
Poe carefully details the most brutal scenes of his stories, a quality shared by many of his works. Within “The Black Cat,” three situations stand to illustrate Poe’s message: when the narrator stabs out Pluto’s eye, when the narrator hangs Pluto, and when the narrator murders his wife. Before the first violent act described in the story, the narrator is known to be a drunkard who abused his wife. No matter how despicable this may be, he is still a somewhat ordinary man. Nothing majorly sets him apart from any another, relating him to the common man. However, his affinity towards alcohol, led to “the fury of a demon” (2) that came over him as he “grasped the poor beast by the throat” (2) and proceeded to “cut one of its eyes from the socket.” (2) Poe’s gruesome description of the narrator as a destructive demon, one who was awakened by alcohol, connects his behavior to the common working-class man. Alcohol is a legal drug that can be obtained by many, and when consumed in excess leads to the uncontrollable madness that ensued. The descriptions of the act plants fear into the hearts of the readers, especially those who have consumed alcohol, of ever becoming such a
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” (“The Raven” 1). “The Raven” arguably one of the most famous poems by Edgar Allan Poe, is a narrative about a depressed man longing for his lost love. Confronted by a talking raven, the man slowly loses his sanity. “The Haunted Palace” a ballad by Poe is a brilliant and skillfully crafted metaphor that compares a palace to a human skull and mind. A palace of opulence slowly turns into a dilapidated ruin. This deterioration is symbolic of insanity and death. In true Poe style, both “The Raven” and “The Haunted Palace” are of the gothic/dark romanticism genre. These poems highlight sadness, death, and loss. As to be expected, an analysis of the poems reveals differences and parallels. An example of this is Poe’s use of poetic devices within each poem. Although different in structure, setting, and symbolism these two poems show striking similarities in tone and theme.
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...
Edgar Allen Poe shows a strong sense of man vs. nature in his poem “The Raven” by giving several instances of natural conflicts such as: outside supernatural sense, the wind, and the raven.
The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe, is instead from the latter end of the Romantic era. This narrative poem recounts a scene in which a raven visits a mourning, distraught lover, who serves as the narrator. Both of these works display dramatic presentation, symbolism, and a great sense of emotional power to create a frightening scene. Poe and Fuseli each infuse their works with dramatic energy.
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.
Furthermore, Poe’s plot development added much of the effect of shocking insanity to “The Black Cat.” To dream up such an intricate plot of perverseness, alcoholism, murders, fire, revival, and punishment is quite amazing. This story has almost any plot element you can imagine a horror story containing. Who could have guessed, at the beginning of the story, that narrator had killed his wife? The course of events in “The Black Cat’s” plot is shockingly insane by itself! Moreover, the words in “The Black Cat” were precisely chosen to contribute to Poe’s effect of shocking insanity. As the narrator pens these he creates a splendidly morbid picture of the plot. Perfectly selected, sometimes rare, and often dark, his words create just the atmosphere that he desired in the story.
Does the narrator show weakness through this mental illness or is it a sophistical mind of a genius? This is the question that must be answered here. Throughout this discussion we will prove that the narrator is a man of a conscience mind and committed the crime of murder. Along with that we will expose Poe’s true significance of writing this short story, and how people were getting away with crime by justifying that they were insane.
Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.
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).
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is a dark reflection on lost love, death and loss of hope. This poem dramatizes the emotions of the poet, who has lost his beloved, and unsuccessfully tries to distract himself from sadness, through studying books. However, books are little help and a single visitor, a Raven, disturbs his solitude. Through the poem Poe uses symbolism, imagery and tone to enforce his theme of sadness and loss. Also, with the use of assonance, alliteration, rhyme and repetition, the poem achieves a melodic level that almost feels like singing when read out loud!
One of the staples of Poe's writing is the dramatic effect it has on the reader. Poe is known for his masterful use of grotesque, and often morbid, story lines and for his self-destructive characters and their ill-fated intentions. "The Black Cat" is no different from any of his other stories, and thus a Pragmatic/Rhetorial interpretation is obviously very fitting. If Pragmatic/Rhetorical criticism focuses on the effect of a work on its audience, then "The Black Cat" serves as a model for all other horror stories. One of the most intriguing aspects Poe introduces into the story is the black cat itself. The main character initially confesses a partiality toward domestic pets, especially his cat. Most readers can identify with an animal lover, even if they themselves are not. It is not long though before the reader learns of the disease that plagues the main character - alcoholism. Again, the reader can identify with this ailment, but it is hard to imagine that alcoholism could be responsible for the heinous actions made by the main character. In a drunken rage the main character cuts out one of the cat's eyes with a pen knife, and act at which he even shudders. Then, only after the cat's slow recovery from that attack, does the man hang the cat from the limb of a tree. ...