Ode To The Black Cat Analysis
Ashley Barboni Short Story Essay English 102 Professor James Wyatt November 4th, 2015 Ode to The Black Cat The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe is a work of Gothic Fiction, a subgenre of Gothic Horror, which combines fiction, horror, death and Romanticism. This short story is in first person point of view, and is told from a jail cell on death row by an unnamed narrator. The narrator tells the reader all about his love for animals and his mild and kind qualities that he’s had since birth. Pluto, a large, smart, black cat, is the narrator’s favorite out of those in his home. The narrator becomes a completely different person when he begins drinking and starts to physically and verbally abuse his wife and pets. Anger getting the best of him, he cuts Pluto’s eye out with a pocket knife. A few days later, he winds up tying a noose around the cat’s neck and hanging it from a tree, killing it. The narrator claims to have done this because he knew it was wrong to do so in the first place. …show more content…
The narrator, his wife and one servant are the only ones to make it out alive. When the narrator returns to the remains of his home a few days later, his bedroom wall is the only thing left standing. On the bedroom wall is an impression of a cat with a rope around its neck, as if someone had thrown the cat through the window to wake the narrator and the cat had stuck to the wall for quite some time. The narrator finds a new cat one night at the bar, just like pluto, but this cat’s ear was clipped and he had a patch of white on his chest. The narrator’s wife falls in love with the new cat right away, and only falls in love with it more when they find out that the cat only has one eye like Pluto. The man begins to despise the cat, especially after his wife points out that the white tuft on its chest forms the image of a gallows, which was a wooden device used to hang
Quotes From 'The Black Cat' By Edgar Allan Poe
1376 Words | 6 PagesAs a result, this has formed a new sense of hatred towards the cat as it is a reminder of his cruelty and makes him feel guilt and shame about his actions. The protagonist constantly feels tormented by the cat’s presence and as a result eventually kills it. This quote from passage two
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1512 Words | 7 PagesThe 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.”
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466 Words | 2 PagesFor example, after the narrator gouges his cat's eye out, the cat becomes petrified of him. As a result the narrator ". . .slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree" (Poe 9). The narrator's reasoning for this was his incessant drinking and short temperament, although that is hardly an excuse. Later on in the story, the narrator finds another cat, who he also attempts to kill for no good reason.
Compare And Contrast The Black Cat And The Cat From Hell
854 Words | 4 PagesIt 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
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564 Words | 3 PagesHere he reflects upon his childhood of a cat and the story drastically changes to where he kills this cat. The inspiration of his cat leads to mental unsteadiness to where he kills his wife in the end. " Sat, the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder" (Poe 14). The power of government establishes the laws. Therefore he had broken them when commuting murder to his cat for animal abuse, and first degree murder for his wife.
Examples Of Suspense In The Black Cat
532 Words | 3 PagesNext, Poe develops suspense in the black cat through the hanging of Pluto. The narrator is unbalanced and insane, yet hangs Pluto with full intent by the limb of a tree. The narrator states, Quote 1 “hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes with the bitterest remorse at my heart” (Poe 2). The violence that the narrator displays with the hanging of Pluto enroots anxiety for the perusal to know.
Suspense In Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat
483 Words | 2 PagesEarly into the story the wife makes frequent allusion, “all black cats are witches in disguise” (Poe 1), which is a popular ancient notation. This tells the reader that they should be suspicious of Pluto because he could possibly be a witch. When the narrator introduces Pluto to the reader he writes “Pluto—this was the cats name” (Poe 1). In Roman mythology Pluto is the god of the underworld.
Compare And Contrast The Black Cat And The Fall Of The House Of Usher
910 Words | 4 Pages“Pluto – this was the cat’s name – was my favorite pet and playmate” (Poe 520). This man is more violent and he hangs and burns that cat he adored. The narrator is not so lucky though, because another black cat follows and haunts him on his way home. This cat also drives him crazy and he tries to kill the cat but ends up killing his wife instead. The narrator buries his wife in the wall and when the police come looking for her body, the cat helps them find her corpse.
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689 Words | 3 PagesLater 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.
Examples Of Arrogance In The Masque Of The Red Death
1598 Words | 7 Pages[Eventually when] the cat followed me [the main character]…, [it] exasperated me [him] to madness. I [he attempted to] aim a blow [with an axe] at the animal… Goaded, by the interference [of his wife], into a rage more than demoniacal, I [he] withdrew my [his] arm from her [his wife’s] grasp and buried the axe in her [narrator’s wife’s] brain (Poe, page 4).” Because the narrator was annoyed and infuriated, he kills his wife, as well, for interfering with his plan to kill the second cat they adopted; thus this shows the main character’s corrupted and malicious mind. The former joyful, generous man sprouts into an evil and a criminal, who murders Pluto, his cat, and his wife.
The Black Cat Argumentative Essay
647 Words | 3 PagesIn 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.
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2065 Words | 9 PagesThe narrator is confined to his path of madness and drunkenness. The narrator’s irritation gets worse, and he attempts to kill the new cat. His wife interjects, and the narrator kills his wife in anger. He chooses to hide his wife’s body in the walls of the cellar.
Similarities Between The Black Cat And The Tell Tale Heart
846 Words | 4 PagesThe narrator got another cat after this and became even more insane in the way he felt about this black cat.
Examples Of Human Nature In The Black Cat
588 Words | 3 PagesEdgar Allan Poe addresses the dark and gruesome side of human nature in his writing “The Black Cat”, which during that time and even now are perceived as radical ideas. This dark human nature is displayed in Poe’s writing as the narrator recalls the happenings of a most erratic event. The narrator, a pet lover with a sweet disposition, in this story succumbs to the most challenging aspects of human nature including that of addiction, anger, and perverseness. To the Christian believer, human’s sinful flesh leads people to do wrong because that is their natural tendency.
The Black Cat Insanity Analysis
717 Words | 3 PagesThe 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
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