''The Black Cat'' By Edgar Allan Poe
Question - 1 How does Poe create a sense of suspense & horror in the story. ( Themes, symbols & etc... )
Answer :
Summary :
The Black Cat” is a Gothic horror tale by Edgar Allan Poe, who relies on supernatural elements to portray the dark side of human nature. The tale was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1843 and examines The Sources of Sin, The Consequences of Alcohol Addiction, and Science Versus the Supernatural through the lens of an unreliable narrator.This study guide refers to the version of “The Black Cat” published in The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Vintage Books, September 1975). He compares the unreliable nature of humans with the steadfastness of his animal companions. He marries young, and his wife shares his disposition toward animals, gifting him a large black cat that is both “beautiful” and “sagacious to an astonishing degree” (223).
The cat, Pluto, becomes a favorite pet and accompanies the narrator around the house and often in the streets. His wife continually makes half-serious references to the folk belief that black cats are witches in disguise. Over time, the narrator's growing dependency on alcohol causes his temperament to change toward his pets and his wife, and he begins physically abusing both. His ill treatment finally extends even to the beloved Pluto. The narrator returns home intoxicated, senses that Pluto is avoiding him, and cruelly removes the creature's eye with a penknife-an act he attributes to the “unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself-to offer violence to its nature-to do wrong for wrong's sake only” (225). The same spirit eventually leads him to hang the creature, weeping as he does so and feeling that he is damned.
On the night of Pluto's murder, the narrator is awoken from sleep by his house burning down. He and his wife narrowly escape alive. The next day, the narrator visits the burned-down house and finds neighbors gathered near the one remaining wall, which bears the image of a cat with a noose around its neck. He rationalizes the image as a bizarre chemical reaction and supposes a neighbor threw the animal's body into the house to alert the residents to the fire. The narrator begins to long for another feline companion, which he one night finds while drinking in a less-than-reputable haunt. He inquires after the creature and discovers it does not belong to the landlord. It is exceedingly affectionate toward him and resembles the deceased Pluto, even missing one eye; however, the cat has a large shock of white fur covering its chest.
Symbols :
Black cats are a traditional symbol of evil, associated particularly with witches and thus the devil. Although Pluto, the narrator's first black cat, is initially his favorite pet, the name suggests an association with death and darkness from the start (Pluto being the Roman god of the underworld). This is certainly the role the black cats play in the narrator's version of events, as the narrator repeatedly links them to witches, ghosts, and demons. The black cats are therefore convenient scapegoats for his own crimes.
Themes :
In its depiction of the narrator's guilt, “The Black Cat” relies on a Christian framework of sin. Other than his alcohol addiction, the narrator can give no reason for why he murdered his beloved Pluto beyond a “spirit of Perverseness” (225). This tendency, which he describes as an inclination to do wrong simply for its own sake, roughly resembles the notion of original sin-the innate propensity to do wrong, in Christian theology. In other words, while the devil might have tempted humanity into its initial sin, the primary locus of evil in Christianity is internal rather than external.
Question - 2 Why do you think the narrator's descent into madness occurs?
Answer :
Edgar Allan Poe's works are famous for featuring dark themes, violence, and psychologically unstable characters. Two of his best-known works are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, both of which involve narrators who are not same. In The Black Cat, the narrator tries to kill his cat but ends up killing his wife when she tries to defend the animal. Madness is a shared characteristic of the narrators in these texts.
Each narrator commits a murder and successfully hides, but is eventually caught because of their own madness. Poe has a unique way of showing this madness in these texts.This essay will argue that Poe represents madness in The Black Cat through the narrators lack of motivation to kill and the linguistic and structural elements of the texts. Madness in The Black Cat is represented by the narrators lack of sufficient reason to commit murder.
She even admits that she loves the man. He states, “The object was not there. There was no passion. I loved the old man. He never wronged me. He never insulted me. I had no desire for his gold”. The insanity is evident in the irrational rationalization the narrator uses to justify his murder. Madness is represented in The Black Cat through the narrator's absurd reasoning for attacking the cat and proceeding to kill both the cat and his wife. After returning home in a drunken state, the narrator states, "I felt the cat avoid my presence" (Black Cat 65). The narrator is enraged at the thought of the cat avoiding him, and in a fit of aggression he gouges out the cat's eye.
Believing that the cat is avoiding him suggests that he is unnecessarily paranoid. A reasonable person would not conclude that the cat is trying to avoid him and her, because avoidance is a human trait. The narrator's violent reaction and despair at the helpless creature also suggests that he is mentally unstable. Even the narrator admits to his madness in this case, as he writes, “The fury of a demon immediately possessed me. I don't know myself anymore" (Black Cat 65). Later, he regrets having harmed the animal. He states, "I blush, I burn, I tremble, when I write of the terrible atrocity". (Black Cat 65).
However, although he regrets it after attacking the cat, he later proceeds to kill it. Madness in this text is represented by the narrator's escalation of violence, from attacking the cat to killing it, even though he feels guilty after the first aggressive interaction with the animal.
Question - 3 What role does alcohol play in the narrator's actions & decisions?
Answer :
There are people who believe the narrator's beloved cat Pluto is to blame for everything that happened in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Black Cat”. With everything that seemed to happen, it would make sense to blame the cat, but delving in deeper into the story one can see that a more logical view of the story would show that the narrator is to blame for what happened in the story.
Earlier in the short story the wife stated that she felt that all black cats are witches, and black cats are already considered bad luck to most people, but the actual character that is to be blamed in “The Black Cat”, is the narrator for many reason, his alcoholism, his bad marriage, and the fact that throughout the story he was going mad.As the story goes along the reader can see how the narrator's alcoholic behavior increases dramatically. The alcoholism plays such a large role in the development of the narrator and even the development of the story that the narrator even goes so far as to call “It” a disease.
As the story progresses the narrator slowly gets angrier and more violent. Leading to him going into a drunken rage causing him to gouge out the eye of his beloved cat Pluto because he would not show him any affection. Then the story goes on through a series of events involving him hanging his cat, because he was so upset at the fact that he caused his cat so much pain and that the cat would not want to be around him.After a while he and his wife find a new home and after some time of living there he notices another black cat next to a huge barrel of alcohol.
Now the barrel is very significant part of the story even though that section of the story is only briefly mentioned. The black cat next to the barrel of alcohol could defiantly signify that his alcoholism is going to kill him or lead to his demise in some way. In the end of the story he ends up hating the new cat because his wife loved it tremendously.The cat constantly kept rubbing on his legs while he was walking, making him believe the cat was trying to kill him. He ended up getting tired of his cat's actions so he attempted to kill the cat, followed up with him killing his wife, which lead to his execution. The narrator made the same mistake many other young couples.
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