The Black Cat Argumentative Essay

In the gruesome short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe a nameless narrator tells his story of his drunken and moody life before he gets hung the next day. The intoxicated narrator kills his favorite cat, Pluto and his wife with an axe. Soon enough, the narrator gets caught and there he ends up, in jail. Although, most readers of “The Black Cat” have argued the narrators insanity, more evidence have shown that he is just a moody alcoholic with a lousy temper.
In this gothic short story, some believe both of the killings are from the narrator’s insanity, but more evidence has proved differently. One example to support this position of the narrator being sane is that he is normal, but when drinking too much, something triggers in his body making him become moody and violate. He says, “But my disease grew upon me – for what disease is like alcohol? – and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish – even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill-temper.” In

He says the following when killing Pluto, “hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart – hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence – hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin – a deadly sin that would jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it.” And here he says the following after killing his wife, “The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little.” In both of the quotes, some of the words can clue you in that he feels remorse, such as, dark deed disturbed me, jeopardize my immortal soul and deadly sin. All of those examples can help conclude that he feels some kind of guilt. If the narrator were insane, he could not feel remorse or guilty because someone can not feel guilty about something when they do not know it’s