Term Paper on "Black Cat Edgar Allan Poe's Short Story"

Term Paper 4 pages (1700 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat" introduces us in a world described by the critics of the time the story was published as more fantastic than anything that was ever told in words. (Forgues, 1846).

The narrator is telling about the events that led to his imprisonment a day before he will be put to rest by the decision of a court law. After having lived as a tender animal loving child nature, he marries young and lives with his equally animal loving wife in a house full of pets. The favorite by far, is a big entirely black cat named Pluto. The cat favors its owner in return. After years of peacefully living together, animals and people), the abuse of alcohol changes the tender loving heart of the grown-up man in a beast using violence against the pets he used to caress and even on his own wife. This latter fact is, however briefly mentioned. One day, unfortunately, it is the cat's turn to feel the effects of the rage that newly engulfed her beloved master. Therefore, she looses one of her eyes when, one day, this one is coming home and imagining that she tried to avoid him, takes out one of her eyeballs with a penknife. The story goes further in this spirit and after a wile, when the cat has recovered and everything seems to have come to some sort of a normal, Pluto, the cat is finally hanged by a tree. The murderer is, of course, the same that left it without an eye.

An unfortunate event happens just a day after the cat was killed and the house is burnt down. By a strange coincidence, the shape of a cat with a rope around his neck appears on the one remaining spot over the narrator's bed, in the fresh plastering. He finds perfectly natural explanations for this. This is, however a first tie to his mentioning of his wife's belief that a black cat is a witch in disguise. Although he mentions it just for the sake of the telling, it rings a bell over superstitious belief and even possible supernatural causes for apparently normal events.

Remorse is very quickly replaced by the returning to what became a normal state of mind: drunkenness. This does not stop him for willing to find a new cat that could replace the old one. What he wished for happens some day and he accidentally finds a cat resembling Pluto, except for a white spot on its chest. The white spot, as he confesses, will stimulate his and his wives imagination to a degree that he will be convinced it resembles the gallows. Instead of making up for the lost one, the presence of the new cat only torments him to the highest degree possible: it becomes his obsession night and day and his only desire is to get rid of it. He gets the chance to do it, one evening, when accompanied by his wife in the cellar; he attempts to kill the cat with an axe. He is stopped by his wife in his abominable act but this leads to an even more abominable one: he turns his rage against the wife who is instantly killed. He walls her up in the wall of the very spot where he executed her and sleeps without torment for about five nights thinking that he also, by some miracle, got also rid of the cat who does not appear after the killing. Police arrives at the crime scene and after hours of search is ready to give up, but the murderer cannot help himself to let them go. While talking to the police he knocks with a cane on the very wall where his wife rested and a scream reveals his deeds to the policemen. That is how he ends up in prison and finally waiting for the day of his execution.

It is clearly the a story of alienation, of domestic violence, a brutal telling of the effects of substance abuse, such as alcohol abuse, but it is also a story of the difficulties a human being encounters when trying to find the limit between human and animal, and to draw a conclusion on the animal side in the human character or on the humanity on the animal side.

At the beginning of his story, the convict's words are: "From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition" (Poe, (http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/blackcat.html).The narrator puts together in the same sentence two notions which do not necessarily belong together. Docility is a characteristic of our pets rather than one of a human being. As he continues with his story, the narrator uses words to describe his favorite pets that show him more inclined to see these as having a human side, or at least, some characteristics closer to us, humans. The are some words written with capitals, such as: Man, when he expresses his thoughts about the love of a pet compared to the feelings expressed by his human fellow beings. First of all, the word man, with capital M" is the second element of the comparison after the first element where the word brute" was used to name the pet. The narrator says: There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man."

By brute," he means the pet, the animal. It is quite surprising to find such a word used to name a pet and it is the first time the bell rings as to being warned that what comes next in the story is not quiet the nice story of some animal loving man. The narrator seems somehow preoccupied to draw a line between humankind and animals, even pets, between humanity and aspects proper to the animal world. First, the pet is described as the animal," the creature," "the brute" (Poe, 1848). Slowly, the Man, subject of abuse, in this case, alcohol abuse is turning to a creature and finally to a brute:" and now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast --whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed --a brute beast to work out for me --for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God."

Another ring of the bell in the beginning of the story, warning the reader that it is going to find out about something exceptional, most uncommon, is heard when the words chosen seems not properly chosen to express certain ideas, such as:, infancy" instead of childhood, intensity of the gratification"(Poe, 1848) when referring to the joy the animal companion brings to a human being, one of my principal sources of pleasure"(Poe, 1848) also when referring to the joy brought by the animals in his life. It seems like the reader is beginning to be exposed the start of a psychic disease. The subject is satisfied only by the attention he gives to his companions or almost entirely by his fury or feathery company.

In his first and one of the few descriptions of the other human character of the story, the wife he is also using words more proper for a description of a psychiatrist than that of a narrator telling about domestic events that took place some time, in his life: I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own."

We are thus already hearing a few bell rings quit early in the story. The next clue is the name of his favorite pet: Pluto. Pluto is the name a planet, but it is also the name of the God of Death in the Greek mythology.

After the first time he commits a condemnable act, he is talking about all the sentiments a very ill person would experience: remorse, horror. Reason is also mentioned in relation to the state of hangover as returning, but it is apparently not enough to touch the soul. We have a few notions from the philosophy here: reason, soul and sentiments such as: remorse.

The alcohol addict is loosing touch with reality and it will find all kinds of chimaeras as grounds for his more and more abominable acts. His own wife is going to be his first and final human victim.

The story ends with the foolish decision of the murderer who decides not to let the police go before some bravado act of his part, but this could be explained by the classical act of a man who completely and irreversibly lost control over himself trying to reveal his facts to those in charge to make justice and to put a stop to what he knows it is wrong and otherwise unstoppable.

The story 'The Black Cat" is the much more than just a simple horror story. It contains reflections… READ MORE

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