Turning To Evil In Poe's 'The Black Cat'

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“Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because we understand it to be such” (Poe 1594)? This last words are the simplification of the human tendency to be human. What it is to be human? Is it kindness, love and affection for others? Well, to be human is to be, at least in some part, evil according, in my opinion, to one great author. This talented author could effortlessly distinguish from ethical and unethical just by observing. Additionally, this author “has been called a drunk, a drug-addict, a hack, a sex pervert, and an exploiter” (May 3). Despite all, Charles May states that this author, “metaphysically mysterious stories, helped create a literature that made America …show more content…

In the short story “The Black Cat” by Poe, black cat is a symbol for the beginning of evilness or decent to irrationality. In our everyday view, cats or felines are just that cats, an animal specimen. However, in old folklore, black cats are characterized as devils, demons, and associated with witchcraft. In addition, the color black is a symbol of darkness, lack of humanity, and secrecy from the truth. Continuously in “The Black Cat,” The narrator was unaware of these last symbols related to the black cat; since he takes as a joke his wife “allusion to ancient popular notion… that all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 1593). To add up, the name of the cat infers darkness; Pluto is, the powerful roman god of the underworld and death, foreshadowing that the dark is close, and the narrator most likely will conclude in an unpleasant place known as hell. Furthermore in the short story “The Black Cat,” night is not just flames of darkness devouring the soul; indeed through the story, the narrator gets out of the house at “night” due to the fact that the face and sins become blurry during night time (Poe 1595). During nighttime, the narrator’s demoniac personality is almost invisible and erase from the perception of the human eye, but it is not exterminated from the existence of the book known as history. However, evil inside the narrator “grew, day by day” because of the darkness built inside his soul made him perverse (Poe 1593). According to the narrator, “Perverseness is one of the primate impulses of the human heart” (Poe 1594); indeed, evil cannot be taken away from humanity. Yet, darkness is just taking time to build up, but eventually human instinct to be evil will be unlocked and escape to

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