"No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood" (1). Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the macabre; his very stories injecting fear into the hearts of his readers. Poe's life was filled with tragedy, as several of the important women in his life, including his wife and daughter died at a young age. He utilized poems and books to express that tragedy. The short stories, "The Black Cat," and, "The Masque of the Red Death," both written by Poe, enhance the theme of fear. "The Black Cat," was about a narrator who had gone crazy and was so overcome by guilt that he went to extreme measures including…
Edgar Allan Poe, reputed as the father of American short stories, is a poet, writer and literary critic of nineteenth century. His works, most of which explore the dark side of consciousness and subconsciousness of human beings, was well-known for horror and mystery. "The Black Cat" is one of Poe's masterpieces. It depicts love, hatred and fear between men through the narration of the changing relationship between a mentally abnormal man and a black cat. Loneliness, death, torture and abnormal psychology are core elements in "The Black Cat" This thesis aims to conduct a research on how Allan Poe managed to achieve psychological horror in "The Black Cat."…
The problems of alcoholism and insanity are recurring themes in Poe’s literary works. One can say that “The Black Cat,” one of Poe’s short stories, portrays much of the author’s own views on his substance abuse problems and mental illness. The unnamed narrator from “The Black Cat,” struggles with his addiction to alcohol and his hatred for two cats become prevailing. The narrator states, however, that he was never like this before he loved animals, “never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe, 3). The narrator takes on a cat and cares for it, however, as his drinking problem progressed, he states, “I grew day by day more moody… my disease grew upon me.” (Poe, 4). After a night out drinking, he decides to cut out one of the cat’s eyes and ultimately, kills the cat. Later, another cat strangely identical to the first cat with one eye comes around and as the narrator tries to kill the second cat he ends up killing his wife instead. He buries the body of his wife and the second cat behind a wall and police later hear the cat calling out from inside the wall. In relation to Poe’s life, Poe was known to love cats and had a female cat named Catterina (Mercier). The killing of the first cat relates to Poe’s own destruction of the things he loved and desired due to alcoholism. He lost his job in 1837 due to his drinking and feuding with other editors (Edgar Allan Poe, Encyclo.) The killing of an innocent wife can closely relate to Poe’s views of women in his own life, through the deaths of both his mother figures and then eventually his wife. Poe writes about women who carry a unique beauty to them. The women are compassionate to the men they…
The human mind is difficult to understand as every human possesses his/her own individual thought rituals at different levels of complexities. From a psychological approach the point(s) to get across are to reveal the revelation of its author’s mind and personality. In other words, how the literature is linked with the author’s mental and emotional characteristics. Today, psychology has been introduced in most everything. Before the field of Psychology was introduced an American author, Edgar Allan Poe, was deeply aware of the complexities of the human mind and its effects on behavior. His comprehension of the human brain is embedded in short stories such as, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Edgar Allan Poe presents protagonists…
“The Black Cat” is narrated by a man on the day before he is to be put to death for the crime of murdering his wife. He can be considered an unreliable narrator. This is because his deeds do not match his words. He states, “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition” and “I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets” (514). He then gouges the eye out and later kills the family pet, a cat, in cold blood by hanging it from a tree. He states that he is not mad. Yet he commits the deeds of a madman. The narrator uses flashback in his description of the events leading up to his execution. Poe uses foreshadowing to hint or give clues of future events. Some of his use of foreshadowing is subtle. At other times it is more obvious.…
"The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado" were written at about the same time during Poe's life. They show many things that he was experiencing during this time…
[2] Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat,” An Exploration of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe, 15 May. 2009 .…
The cause of the conflict in the story “The Black Cat” is lack of respect of morals. The narrator’s behavior was affected by his weakness, which is alcohol. The addiction to alcohol start to make him think of horrific thoughts, thus he began to act upon them. Poe wrote, “This spirt of perverseness came to my final overthrow” (par. 10).…
Poe and the narrator in The Black Cat both have a drinking problem, which is noticeable when the narrator describes the room, “reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogshead of gin, or of rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment” (Pg. 226). Poe and the narrator both also had a loving wife who died, although one died of tuberculosis and one of murder. Moreover, both had a mental illness. Poe faced depression that influenced his life and the narrator is clearly unstable and apathetic.…
The narrators madness is ultimately conveyed through his unrealistic rational to kill the old man because of his opposition toward his eye. Similarly, another one of Poe’s stories, The Black Cat, lacks logic and reason, conveying the narrator’s madness, where the narrator kills his cat that he claims to love. In both the stories, the narrators commit atrocious crimes towards objects they love, without a normal motive to do so. As they both try to convince the reader of their sanity, they are ultimately conveyed as mad due to their lack of logic and…
“I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings.” In “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, the author gets drunk one night murdering his beloved cat, thinking that the cat didn’t love him. In “The Black Cat,” the mood is changed throughout the story which in the beginning is violent but towards the end changes to guilt as revealed through the symbol in this piece which was the black cat.…
In the Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is unnamed, but he is the main character and the most important character in the story. As the story develops, the narrator develops. The narrator is dynamic and makes the story dynamic.…
One of Poe's rules for 19th Century Poetry is that writing should exhibit one effect or one purpose, which is to scare the reader. Poe uses diction and detail to put disturbing images into people's head. In "The Black Cat" the narrator declines from sanity to madness. Poe uses detail to set up the situation where the narrator goes insane. On page 2 the narrator states that "[his] original soul seemed, at one, to take its flight from [his] body", due to alcohol the narrator loses all control of his body and every fiber of his soul is ripped out. This detail creates a scary effect and…
1. From what point of view is Poe’s story told and why is this view particularly effective for this story?…
Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” can be considered a horror story as well as a study in human psychology. The horrors of the violent acts committed by the narrator are explained as the story progresses as is the demise of his mental state. As he describes himself in the opening of the story as a lover of animals, it is shocking to later read of his first act of violence toward his cat, the gouging out of his eye. Although the narrator appears to show some remorse, shame, and guilt over this act on the cat he is able to drown it all out with the continued consumption of alcohol. It is apparent that the excessive use of alcohol started him on the path of perverseness and unable to handle the guilt…