The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

In the story “The Black Cat”, Poe uses many gothic traits and examples to embark terror into the reader of the story. Poe is able to construct so many different aspects of gothic literature into one single terrifying story for the reader to enjoy. Poe uses traits such as the use of love and true imagination in his stories and twists them into one of a kind horror for the reader. In “The Black Cat’, Poe uses love as one of the problems in the story, and as one of the ways to plant fear and terror into the mind of the reader (“Love Stories”). Poe also uses a gothic convention and implants the human fear and fascination with the unknown into the story. Poe also introduces perverseness as one of the main plots in this story. Poe uses the feeling of guilt throughout the story and shows the main characters mental state begin to decline as time goes on throughout the story. Poe also uses the loss of control over one's own behavior and the horrifying effects of this, introducing the fear of one's own self as fear of the unknown.
Poe’s use of the dark setting and fear of the unknown adds gothic texture to the story. A major thing that happens though in this story with blood and the walling up of the black cat would make this story lean more towards horror than gothic. It is more horror because there is blood and the killing of people being described. A major horror trait in the story is the man getting a hatchet to the back of his head. This moment in the story is definitely horror and not a gothic trait at all. Just the add in of the blood and gruesome murders in this stories changes it from gothic to