Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'

Alcoholism can completely eradicate the human sense of right or wrong. ‘The Black Cat’ is a story of loss and murder that is focused on the nameless narrator and the terrible thing he does when intoxicated. The story is written by Edgar Allen Poe. How would it be to live the life of a man who let anger come over him and later on kills his cat Pluto, and his wife. This story is about the narrator’s flashbacks on the events that put him into jail and on his way to death.

An author has the freedom to create their own worlds. Some are realistic worlds with a dark twist, others are just complete nonsense. What if the world of an author came to life? Specifically, how would the World of Edgar Allen Poe be? Most of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories have a similar theme. This essay will be focusing on the world where his story “The Black Cat” takes place. This world of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” is unnatural, with heavy themes of violence. Characters in this world behave unnaturally with violence and cruelty, and murder is commonplace.

In the short story The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, the story revolves around a man on death row who is giving his confession to a murder. The story starts out as the narrator tells the readers that from a young age, he had always loved animals. He and his wife have many pets, the favorite of his being a large black cat called Pluto. The narrator and Pluto are very close and their friendship last for many years until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night after coming home completely intoxicated, he grabs his cat and in an effort to escape, Pluto bites him.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the tone gives off an eerie and bizarre feeling. This is similar to many of Poe’s other short stories but this piece the most. The tone is gloomy compared to “The Black Cat” that Poe has also written. The author starts off the story with immense details of the setting. The readers get a dark vibe from these details.

What gives the reader that feeling of being on the edge of their seat? Why would he want the reader to anticipate what’s going to happen next? That is how the author expresses tension. The author does this by using literary devices. Edgar Allen Poe builds suspense in “The Black Cat” by using specific literary devices—foreshadowing, allusion, and slow pace.

“Lord help my poor soul.” These were the last words uttered by a delirious Edgar Allan Poe on the night of his death on October 3, 1849, wearing another man’s clothes. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Poe’s death and his tragic life reflect his often morbid, macabre, and bitter works. It is often speculated that the death of every woman in Poe’s life due to consumption, leaving him to believe he was cursed, along with his financial failures (though he did have literary success during his lifetime), may have left him unhinged. Two comparable short stories written by Poe are “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death.”

The Black Cat is a short story that shares a tale of a man and his cat, Pluto. The man was once kind and loved animals, but due to a large intake of alcohol, he becomes aggressive towards not only his wife, but Pluto as well. The narrator explains his change of heart by saying, “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.”

It is also an unusual situation, because in the story, after he hanged the cat and went to sleep, his house suddenly burns out of nowhere (“I was aroused…” | Paragraph 10), and the members of the household, including the man, successfully escaped, and pluto, the cat he hanged, has resurrected into another black cat (“It was a black

In “The Raven,” he suggests that the eyes of the Raven symbolize his inner demons, claiming that they stare into his soul and compress his heart with the guilt he carries. This is evident when he describes the raven’s eyes as “fiery eyes [which had] now burned into my bosom’s core” (Poe 74). The eyes of the raven continually haunt the narrator throughout the poem, and since the poem is a projection of Poe’s emotions, it can be understood that Poe sees the eyes as a constant reminder of the burden of grief he has within himself. Similarly, in “The Black Cat,” the narrator of the story becomes angry with his cat, Pluto, and tears out one of his eyes while under the influence of alcohol. He eventually kills his cat, in a fit of rage, and then believes that the cat comes back to haunt him; He encounters a similar cat that bears a strange resemblance to Pluto.

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.

It is significant that this cat will not leave the narrator alone because Pluto acted the same way and it is a reminder to the narrator regarding the killing of Pluto. Towards the beginning of the anecdote, it said how Pluto always attended the main character wherever he went whether it was the house or the streets. In comparison to Pluto, the new cat would do the same. He would follow the narrator home and places he went, as well. The importance of this is it forces the storyteller to remember the past cruelty he had done to Pluto.

The narrator of “The Black Cat” is an alcoholic. By mistreating his pets and wife, he demonstrates how his addiction affects him. Alcoholism itself is an act of insanity because alcoholics see things in an entirely different manner than sober people. The narrator had a sufficient childhood and had a great deal of pets. Once he grew addicted

The narrator got another cat after this and became even more insane in the way he felt about this black cat.

In the Poem “The Black Cat” 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”. (Poe 1)

Later the philosophy of the cats is told, and it is reveled that there is some unknown deity in the sky who once a year grants an extra life to a chosen cat.