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The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

826 Words4 Pages

Brooke Malick
Ms. Heppenheimer
Essential Literature
28 April 2023
Guiltily going mad

Behind the bars in a little square cement room sits the author telling the story about how he got there and the reason he was caught for his heinous crime from guilt and madness. “ The Black Cat '' a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe is told by an unknown narrator set back in time from inside a jail cell. The conflict is between a mean drunk and his cat. In the story, the narrator begins to struggle with an addiction to alcohol and his cat Pluto starts to realize his behavior and begins to resent him. The narrator does something awful to his cat Pluto, and he then starts to feel guilty. A new cat comes around and the narrator shortly starts to resent …show more content…

The cat no longer likes the narrator due to the fact that he gouged the cat's eye out when he was drunk. “ I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the Limb of a tree;- Hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes” (Poe 6). The guilt about why the cat no longer liked him started to make him go mad and caused him to do what he did to Pluto. This helps show internal and external conflict because he could no longer stand the fact his cat did not like him, so he ended the cat's life. According to Sova, Dawn B the black cat Pluto helps show that the narrator has guilt by how he treats the cat and how he portrays his emotions towards the cat. Sova, Dawn B nicely describes how the cats in the story are important in portraying the narrator's guilt “ The black cat becomes a symbol of the narrator's guilt, self-hatred and need for …show more content…

A new cat showed up and, the narrator shortly started to resent this cat because he was a lot like Pluto. “ I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly let me confess it at once by absolute dread of the beast” (Poe.9). This shows how he dreads the cat being around him, but he withheld from doing anything to it because he was haunted by the memory of what he did to Pluto. The narrator is trying not to go mad and do bad things, so he is fighting himself internally to do so.
Lastly the narrator has gone mad from the guilt of everything he has done he killed his cat Pluto and when trying to attack the new cat that came around he had accidentally killed his wife. “ Aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul” (Poe 13). The internal conflict is that the narrator is able to sleep well even though he has murdered in his mind and is feeling guilty. An external conflict is that he has murdered his wife and cat and now has to try and cover it up. He has gone mad from the guilt to the point he is able to sleep well at

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