In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, he writes a cold, heartless story from an unnamed narrator’s point of view. The Black Cat is about the narrator’s current life which he claims to be sane, but throughout the story it is clear he is not. The story focuses on the narrator’s alcohol abuse and how it causes him to have mood swings and violent out lashes to his pets to the point of killing them. Poe writes a story of revenge from the black cat Pluto in this story. Poe uses the narrator’s cold, disturbed character, plot
Before his death, an unnamed narrator begins to tell the reader is sane, but throughout the story it is obvious he is not. The story begins a few years before the present, when the narrator is a well-known honorable person. He confesses that he has a love for cats and dogs because they respect friendship unlike people or humans. The narrator marries young and shows his wife how fun it is owning pets like birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, and a monkey.
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He constantly gets drunk which causes him to have mood swings and out lashes against his animals and his wife. His alcoholism can be pointed out as the main motive to his behavior (Stark). All of the animals he owns get some kind of abuse from him, even his beloved cat Pluto. The narrator gets so agitated when his cat bites him. Pluto was only defending himself from the narrator and had to bite the narrator to defend himself. The narrator obviously lets his wrath take over and decides to cut one of his eyes out. No one in their right mind would to this to an animal who did nothing to him. The narrator only felt half guilty for cutting Pluto’s eye out of his socket. At this point in the story, it clear that the narrator’s conscious is no longer right since he can abuse his animals for no reason and cut his favorite pet, Pluto, eye out. This event steers the reader into the darkness of the soul that the narrator now
Poe’s narrator of “The Black Cat”, who declares that “he will die tomorrow”, describes himself as a caring and loving man. When he was young, he was bullied because of his “concern for all living things”. He also was considered to be rather timid and an easy target for bullies. The external locus of control in his case was that he right away became a victim of his behavior.
Even when the narrator was drunk and addicted to alcohol, he tries his best not to mistreat Pluto. It seems the reason why he does this is because of the way Pluto treats him. The storyteller is finally able to have company from an animal who cares and adores about him.
The narrator even hints the abuse of Pluto causes his “old” heart to feel grieve for the cat’s dislike. His feelings after he hits his cat is important because the readers are able to see the conflict the main character has within himself. Furthermore, the narrator is able to understand the evilness of his abuse, but, the alcohol, which symbolizes
The narrator of “The Black Cat” saying that while recounting the story his “...immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.(531) ” He so clearly attempts to downplay a story in which he abuses and murders animals and killed his wife, signaling serious mental issues. Hurting a fellow human is seen as one thing, still horrible, but hurting a household pet, who has no chance of truly fighting back, is another aspect of horror. The narrator abusing Pluto—the first cat the owner has—is him trying to fight his impending madness (Shulman 256). This doesn’t seem to work, so he hangs the cat.
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.
His path only grows darker as he proceeds from verbally mistreating his wife to physically abusing her. The love and tenderness of his pets began to vanish and not only neglected them but placed them through maltreatment as well. Regardless, we observe his favourite cat, Pluto didn’t directly experience the man’s aggressive conduct until a later night, although Pluto is still aware of the man’s actions. As the man returned home, intoxicated by the alcohol he had consumed in town, he noticed that Pluto evaded his presence. Frustrated by this act, the man attempted to seize the old black cat but was responded with a wound in his hand instead.
Approaching the final of his days, Poe began to fall into depression and craziness because of Virginia passing away. He drank more and more frequently and heavily. The stories that he published in the last years of his life often had an alcoholic character. In Particular, “The Black Cat” which was published in 1845, 4 years before Poe died in 1849. In the story, the narrator gets aggressive and hurts his cat while he is extremely intoxicated.
This raises the questions about why the narrator hangs Pluto by the neck on a tree. The main character shares, “[I] hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin” (Poe 2). The reader questions why the narrator hangs Pluto if he knew he was committing a sin, which leads the reader to wonder what will happen next.
So when the narrator does all those horribly things to him and all this weird stuff start happening, it makes the reader nervous to know if Pluto could actually be the one causing this stuff to
Edgar Allan Poe once said, “Men have called me mad but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” It is until reading one of Poe’s works that one begins to question the mind of Poe and his characters. Especially in stories such as “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, it takes an extremely deranged mind to write in the detail and ideology as he did. In the short story, “The Black Cat”, the narrator tells his story of a cat he cherished. After a fateful night of drinking, he comes home and attacks his wife and cat, resulting in the cat losing its eye.
This brings him to love pets more that humans. He gets happily married to his wife and lives with many pets. As the narrator said, “I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.” One of which is an all-black cat named Pluto. The narrator loved this cat more than and pet he owned and his own wife.
Many of Poe’s greatest works have left the readers inquiring about the sanity of the narrator. One of those works would be “The Black Cat”, among others. The narrator’s actions in the book bring about many questions and speculations. It is unmistakable that the narrator’s actions in “The Black Cat” show that the narrator’s insanity. There are multiple instances in “The Black Cat” that shows the mental sanity of the narrator.
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 same idea is present in Poe’s writing as the narrator gives in to his own perverseness. In this section of the story, the narrator thus far has stabbed out the eye of his beloved cat, Pluto. The narrator continues, saying, “Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?” (Poe, 2) Here, the narrator is trying to justify what he has done to his cat, while also pointing out his own tendency as a human to do what is wrong just because he knows it to be wrong. This challenges the reader to think of their own human nature, which has most likely taken over their responses to
The Black Cat is written by Edgar Allan Poe, who has written much in the past. He was always questioned about how reliable his stories were in the past, but in this story it brings major attention to the reasons why. In the story the narrator states “…a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me.” In that quote it shows that his past life affected his actions that took place in The Black Cat.