Analyzing Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'

Аширбекова Шолпан,
ПД-11-1
"The Black Cat" is a famous short story from horror-master Edgar Allan Poe. It was first printed on August 19, 1843, in the Philadelphia edition of a newspaper called the United States Saturday Post. We think a newspaper is a perfect place for it. This lurid tale reads like something right out of the headlines – bizarre headlines to be sure. Gruesome news items were just as popular in Poe's time as they are in ours.

Like many news stories, "The Black Cat" can be a downer. Stripped to bare bones, it's a story about domestic violence and brutal murder. It's the death-row confession of nameless man who destroys himself, his wife, and his pets. As is often the case with real life murderers, we can't pinpoint exactly
He was particularly fond of animals and had numerous. He married someone with a similar interest, and they had many pets together. However, particular mention is given to a black cat they have together, Pluto, the favourite pet of the narrator. However, because of alcohol, he changes his sunny "disposition" and becomes uncontrollable and more irritable. He mistreats both his wife and his pets. One night, returning drunk, he grabs his cat wildly, and the cat bites his hand. In a rage, he cuts one of the cat's eyes out. He later goes on to take the cat into the backyard and hang it from a tree, because he knows he is committing a terrible sin and he feels guilty. On that same night, his house burns down, reducing his conditions greatly. Later, in the ruined house he finds a picture of a gigantic cat on one of the walls with a rope around its neck. Although he tries to explain this picture away, he is unsettled. He and his wife move to a new house. He continues to drink, and, one night, in the local bar, he finds and adopts another black cat exactly like Pluto, but with a white patch on his breast. This cat stays with him and his wife, but he comes to regard this cat with fear and dread, connecting it with agony and death. One day, he and his wife go down to the cellar to break up some kindling for the winter, his new cat following him and runs under his feet and almost causes him to
Irony There are various ironies in this story. The typical one is when the narrator worries that after he relates his story, others will not give it much thought and will not probably consider it as an ordinary event. Nonetheless, the narrator is telling the story from his prison cell awaiting his death, and his tale is a criminal one out of his wrath. Undoubtedly, this seems very far from ordinary. He describes his events as normal and that he had committed no mistakes or faults which in fact he is a dangerous murderer. This example clarifies how he narrates in an ironical way:
Irony can be found when the narrator cuts out Pluto's eye, the cat sees well “but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual,”.
Previously, the cat loved and trusted the narrator, following him everywhere, and they were fond of each other. But after the cat misses an eye, it sees the narrator for what he is, an imprudent, dangerous man.