In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” the author uses karma as the theme of his story, as a result, later in the story he has to face the consequences. As the story unfolds, so does the theme, karma. Karma is a widely believed Buddhist Belief that a wide range of people have faith in. Karma implies that a person who does good deeds, will be rewarded with a better life in their next incarnation. Unjust acts committed lead to worse living conditions in their next life. This story uses an adaptation of that belief, and that is that horrid, unjust acts, like those committed by the narrator of the story, will not go unpunished forever. With each unjust deed that the narrator commits, an action of great consequence soon follows. This is shown when he hills the cat “One morning, in cool blood, 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, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; -- hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had …show more content…
en me no reason of offence; -- hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin -- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it -- if such a thing were possible -- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.” And then later in the story another cat with white gallows on its chest is the reason that
Gothic Lit Essay The mysterious magical and majestic Gothic Literature leads you on a page turning journey you never would expect. The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern all use the Gothic Elements of revenge, violence and mystery. Gothic Literature can provide a heart thumping scare just by adding a Gothic Element like revenge. In The Devil and Tom Walker and The Night Circus both authors depend on the element of revenge.
In this instance, it is clear that the protagonist is damned. By hanging and maiming animals, then later having his house burned down, the protagonist is shown to not be getting away with his sins. The burned house was found to have a burn mark of “a rope about [a cat’s] neck” (Poe 61), showing the reader that the man did one “get one over on God” and that God did truly see that that man is sinning and is not approved of. Following the omen from God, the man reflects on his mistakes and has his guilt keep him awake at night, Although this is a sign of redemption, this man is not feeling guilty for the right reasons, simply, the man is guilty for being caught, not the action itself. The man does not learn his lesson and continues to sin by being filled with “rage, more than demonical” (Poe 63), which causes him to kill his wife.
In another scene of the book, Paul and Kat climb out of a hole they jumped in and notice a recruit on the ground…”Kat looks around and whispers… shouldn't we just take a revolver and put an end to it? The youngster will hardly survive the carrying and barely last a couple of days.” When Paul and Kat find this recruit laying on the ground, in pain and without a gas mask, Cat's natural instinct is to put an end to his suffering. This choice takes away every part of innocence a person may present in the fact that taking a person's life no matter the state of the person is an extremely difficult/treacherous thing to do. Many people would have trouble ending a state of suffering because it doesn't seem like the right thing to do but
Many authors or poets use this theme to depict how past experiences or events affects people mentally and can leave them demented in many cases. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe encompasses this theme. While searching for answers from the raven, “respite the nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore” (Poe 439) the man cannot get over the loss of his wife causing psychological issues for the man such as trying to obtain info from a raven about his dead wife. Correspondingly, in “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, the man becomes agitated with the cat and decides to hang it. He “hung it because (he) knew in doing so (he) was committing a sin” (Poe 2).
For 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.
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
Here 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.
The story continues with an event that is unfortunately far more terrible and unexpected than the previous events. The narrator allows his increasing anger towards the second black cat to lead him to killing his wife. His temper and hatred that began with the second black cat eventually ended up impacted him and his wife. The narrator states, “I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan” (Poe 5).
The following night after the narrator kills the cat, the house catches on fire and the next day the narrator comes back to the house to see the ruins and came to see a group of people around a strange bas relief on the wall. The narrator was terrified when he saw what the bas relief was and the narrator writes, “There had been a rope about the animal’s neck” (Poe 3).
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.
The 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.
The narrator in ‘The Black Cat’ seems to act like two people at once . The narrator starts his story by trying to tell his readers he is not crazy. He says, “Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream (“The Black Cat”).” This is a good example of unreliable narrator, because only crazy people try really hard to make others believe they are not crazy. The narrator does not help his case when he admits to hurting the cat for fun.
In The Black Cat he thought the cat was his friend and in The Tell-Tale heart he had spied on the old man. In the second body he killed both the old man and the black cat. In the third the black cat came back and the man heard the beating of the old man's heart again when he thought he was dead. If you kill someone you love you're going to regret it or something bad will happen to you, friends, or
Edgar 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.
In the book Wright’s father is awakened by a kitten. His father yells to kill the cat in a figurative way, Wright took it literal. He killed the cat and was later in trouble for doing so. Wright said, “My brother ran away in fright. I found a piece of rope, made a noose, slipped it about the kitten’s neck, pulled it over a nail, then jerked the animal clear of the ground” (11).