According to the documentary The Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe When Poe found a job it didn’t last him long until he would be looking for another job. Poe didn’t have the money to pay the medical bills for Virginia when she was sick. Poe never grew up with biological father since his father abandon his family at a young age. Also Poe’s foster father never wanted to deal with Poe since they adopted him. All through Poe’s life he never had any kids of his own even after being together with three different women. In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” (1843) thematically posits domestic violence as the result of an early 19th century husband’s failure to fulfill two patriarchal responsibilities: to biologically reproduce and to satisfy the family’s material needs.…
"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."…
Poe’s story is told in the Participant Narrator point of view. This is an especially effective point of view for this story because it allows the reader to see inside the mind of the killer. This allows us to bear witness to the killer’s mental deterioration and his eventual insanity.…
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 Tell Tale Heart" as people say, "This story is told through the eyes of a madman.......Who,like all of us, believed that he was sane." Sanity believe it or not, is harder to keep than you think. One thing that I have learned from "The Tell Tale Heart" which is, obsessing over little things, is that obsession can lead to insanity. As it did for the man when he obsessed over the old man's eye and heart beat. Obsessions are a common thing and my three basic points of this are, the insanity of the man in the story, the obsession of negativity in Poe's life and how his sanity was effected and how obsessions connects with my life and others around me.…
The narrator is increasing the terror and madness by making the screams scarier. The child cries starts as a soft whimpering sound. It happens so much, escalating “howl” loud and fully mature noise; puts in an “inhuman” howl like it was a beast down in the hole with half terror and half triumph. The madness and terror increases so much that the author questions if the howls are from hell by demons.…
The narrator does not reveal a specific name, but does reveal that he is a care giver to the old man which is the only identity given in the short story. Through the short story it’s shown that the narrator is not a dynamic character, because at the beginning of the story he is insane and at the end he is still insane, which reveals that the character has no change or growth throughout the whole story. But the only part where he develops a kind of change and growth is when the narrator hears the corpse’s heartbeat from beneath the floor he screams in agony saying “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!”(Poe 18) which makes him a conscious of the big mistake and horrible crime he has committed. This small change and growth of the main character is very visible in the story due to the point of view that the story is being told.…
Every good story has interesting main characters that the reader can follow. This includes the stories of “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe. Both stories have their main characters change towards the end of their respective stories. In addition, both stories can be centered around the theme of losing innocence as both characters partake in actions that they thought they would never do or see. In fact, both characters are similar in the fact that they both are allured by temptation, proven as unreliable, commit unspeakable acts, and…
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…
The setting of "The Black Cat" creates the mood of terror and fear evident in the setting of a Gothic romance. The establishment of an emotional atmosphere of mystery and fear is very important in creating the mood of the Gothic romance. The somber, ominous setting of a Gothic romance story contributes to the formation of a mood of terror and danger by sustaining a "general air of mystery and fear" (Steeves 253). Likewise, "The Black Cat" contains an eerie setting that sustains an emotional mood of terror. One example of an eerie setting that demonstrates the mood of terror in the story is when the narrator's house burns down. The fire comes the night after the narrator is possessed by an evil impulse causing him to hang the one-eyed black cat he so dreads. Following the devastating fire only a single plaster section of a wall remains "where many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of [the wall] with very minute and eager attention" and the narrator is filled with feelings of "wonder and [. . .] terror" as he sees the silhouette of the cat (Poe 143). The setting with the crowd of bystanders looking carefully at a mysterious silhouette on the only standing wall of the house invites the narrator's own curiosity and fear of the silhouette's likeness to the dreaded black cat. Thus, the setting of the only standing wall with the mysterious silhouette in "The Black Cat" inspires emotions such as mystery and fear that define the mood of the Gothic romance. Also, multiple threats to the stability of the narrator keep the dark mood of the Gothic romance alive in "The Black Cat." In a Gothic romance, the mood of terror is found in the "unbroken succession of threats to the narrator's peace, safety, and honor" (Steeves 252). Likewise in "The Black Cat" a series of threats to the narrator's…
With approximately sixty to one hundred million feral cats loose in the United States measures have started to be taken to lessen the number of cats we have in the wild. However, with the threat of offending animal rights activists there are only so many steps that can be considered humane enough to enforce. A feral cat can be defined as a cat that has been abandoned or a cat that was originally born in the wild. With the large amount of wild cats we have in the United States it has become a growing concern nationwide to those individuals who live near the populations of feral cats, and to researchers who are studying or protecting native birds and small mammals that the cats prey on. Researches have come to the conclusion that the trap, neuter and release, or TNR, of feral cats is the best way to reduce the amount of cats we have in the United States, while also being…
Poe's use of characterization in the stories ‘The Black Cat”, “the Tell-Tail Heart”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”, allow Poe to demonstrate the madness that his characters typically go through. For example in “the Tell-Tale Heart” on page one Poe writes, “True!--…
Why are people tempted to do things they are not suppose to do? How do you let a problem go far beyond your reach to solve? Would you let it get to the point where the problem is bigger than you? In “The Black Cat” Edgar Allan Poe writes a story to teach people a lesson. Poe begins the story by introducing the nameless character in his prison cell who retells his story with all the horrible sins he had committed. The nameless narrator makes horrible decisions by giving into his perverseness. Perverseness is when a person does something they know that they should not do but still do. He first gives into his perverse self and cuts Pluto’s eye out, his black cat. Later in the story, he kills the cat by hanging it on a tree because he felt guilty of his actions. He then replaces Pluto, but ends up trying to kill the cat. Unfortunately, as he tries to kill the cat his wife interferes and he kills her instead. At the end of the story the narrator hides his wife’s body in the cellar wall. Four days later the cops come to his house to inspect, they searched his house then his cellar wall fell and exposed his dead wife’s body. He then is sentenced to be hanged. Poe uses symbolism, similes, and irony to convey that a person should be careful of their perverseness because if…