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The Black Cat ~ Notes

Created Sep 29, 2020 332 PM

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Quick Summary:
'The Black Cat' is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like much of
Poe's work, the story portrays dark events. A man relates the story of his
violence against his wife and pets, violence that ultimately ends in murder.

The story’s narrator is an animal lover who, as he descends into alcoholism and
perverse violence, begins mistreating his wife and his black cat Pluto. When Pluto
attacks him in self-defense one night, he seizes the cat in a fury, cuts out one of
its eyes, and hangs it. That night a fire destroys his house, leaving him in dire
poverty. He later adopts a one-eyed black cat that he finds at a low-life tavern,
but after he nearly trips on the cat, he attempts to kill it too. When his wife
intervenes, he kills her instead and calmly conceals her in a wall. In the end the
black cat reveals the narrator’s crime to the police.

Full Summary:
From his prison cell, the unnamed narrator is writing the story of how everything
in his life fell apart. Since he will die the next day, he wants to set the record
straight, and tells us the story of his life…
From the day he is born, he is mild and kind. He loves animals and has lots of
them. As he gets older up these qualities grow stronger. Taking care of his pets

The Black Cat ~ Notes 1

 and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. His favorite animal
companion is his dog.
Before long, he gets married. His wife loves animals too, and fills the house with a
variety of them. One of these is a humongous, all black, super-smart cat named
Pluto. When the man starts drinking, his personality takes a turn for the worse. He
starts physically and verbally abusing his wife and pets. One night, the narrator
comes home from partying completely drunk. Thinking Pluto didn't want to hang
out with him, he grabs the cat and cuts his eye out with a pen-knife.
One morning, not long after the eye-gouging, the narrator is overcome with a
perverse impulse. He hangs Pluto from a tree in his garden, murdering him.
Writing from his jail cell, the narrator claims he did it precisely because he knew it
was wrong. That night, the night of the murder, the man's house catches fire and
burns down. Only the man, his wife, and one servant are left alive. But, they lose
all their money in the flames, along with the house. When the narrator returns the
next day, there is a crowd in his bedroom, looking at his bedroom wall. On the
wall is the slightly raised image of a "gigantic cat" with a rope around its neck
11.
Since he left the cat hanging all day and all night, he figures one of the neighbors
cut it down and then threw it through his window to wake him up. Somehow it
stuck in the plaster of the wall. This bothers the man for a long time.
One night when he's out drinking, another black cat appears on the scene. This
cat looks just like Pluto, except for the little white spot on his chest. The man
takes the cat home, and his wife is quite pleased.

When it is discovered that this cat is also missing an eye, the man begins to
despise it, while the woman loves it all the more. After some time passes, the
woman shows the man that the white spot on the cat's fur has grown. Oddly, the
white spot now forms an image of "the GALLOWS!" 21. The gallows is a
wooden device used to hang people.)

The man is too afraid of the cat to abuse it. The cat never leaves him alone for a
moment, and even sits on his chest and breathes in his face when he is in bed. So,
the man doesn't get any sleep. As his loathing of the cat increases, so does his
physical and verbal abuse of his wife. One day he and his wife go down to the
cellar of the crummy old house they live in now that they are poor. The cat

The Black Cat ~ Notes 2

 follows them. In a fit of extreme irritation, the man tries to kill the cat with an axe.
The woman stops him, and the man "burie[s] the axe in her brain," killing her 23.
The narrator wonders how best to conceal the body? After much deliberation, the
man decides to hide the body in a space behind the cellar wall. That night, the
man sleeps peacefully for the first time in ages. The cat is nowhere to be seen.
The cops come around, but the man has finesses them. No big deal. On the fourth
day, still no cat. But, the police return and search the house again, especially the
cellar. Right when they are about to leave, abandoning their search of the cellar,
the narrator decides to start bragging about how well built the house is. He takes
his cane and hits it against the spot in the wall where he's hidden his wife's body.
A noise answers his knock! It is a sad sound, like a kid crying. It sounds horrible
and desperate, but also victorious. The police are on it. They take down the wall
only to find the dead body, with the cat on top of its head. And that's why the
narrator is in jail, sentenced to death by hanging. The narrator had accidentally
shut the cat up in the wall with the body.

Analysis
Much like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat” follows the narrator’s descent into
madness after he proclaims his sanity in the tale’s opening paragraph. Even the
narrator acknowledges the “wild” nature of the tale, attempting thereby to
separate his mental condition from the events of the plot. The nature of the
narrator’s madness differs from that of the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “The
Black Cat” does not concern itself only with the self-contained nature of the
narrator’s mind. Rather, the narrator confesses an alcoholism that interferes with
his grasp on reality and produces mood swings. Alcohol is, like the cat, an
external agent that intrudes on the dynamics of the plot. The introduction of
alcohol as a plot device is also significant because Edgar Allan Poe was an
reputedly uncontrollable drunk throughout his lifetime. For many years, his
biographers asserted that he died of alcohol poisoning in a gutter in Baltimore.
More recent biographies insist that the exact cause of Poe’s death cannot be
determined. Regardless, it is certain that Poe suffered from the deleterious
effects of alcohol consumption throughout his life.

The Black Cat ~ Notes 3

 The influential literary critic Tzvetan Todorov introduced a concept of the
“fantastic” in the early 1970s to discuss literature of horror, and the idea can be
applied usefully to “The Black Cat.” The fantastic, he asserts, explores the
indefinite boundary between the real and the supernatural. The fantastic is a
literary category that contains elements of both the rational and the irrational.
One of the fantastic elements in “The Black Cat” is the existence of the second
cat—with the changing shape of its white fur and its appearance on the corpse
behind the wall. These plot twists challenge reality, but they do not completely
substitute a supernatural explanation for a logical one. It is possible that the plot
twists derive only from the insanity of the narrator. As a result, the plot twists, like
the fantastic, hover between the real and the supernatural. The resolution of the
story is both rationally possible and tremendously unlikely; the cat could inhabit
the basement walls, but it is difficult to believe that it would remain silently in the
wall for a long time or go unnoticed by the overly meticulous narrator.

Superstitious
The man claims that Pluto was of above average "intelligence" 4. He tells us that
the woman jokingly wondered, quite often, if the cat was really a witch, drawing
on the myth of "all black cats as witches in disguise" 4. He claims to provide
this information, not for any particular reason, but because he remembered it.
Hmm. That makes us suspicious. It sounds like the narrator is using his wife to
inject the possibility of the supernatural into this tale.In this same paragraph, he
suggests condescendingly that his wife is overly superstitious. A superstition is an
irrational belief or fear. Belief in the supernatural is often considered superstitious.
This is ironic, considering that he's the one trying to convince us that a black cat
is to blame for all his problems.As we discuss in the above section, the woman is
also the one who convinces the man that the second cat has the image of a
gallows on his chest. Again, the man uses his wife to inject the possibility of the
supernatural into the story.We don't know exactly why, but the woman seems to
be, in addition to a victim of spousal abuse and murder, connected with the
possibility of the supernatural. We would almost expect her to come back to life
and haunt the man. The fact that she doesn't brings us back to reality. The
supernatural possibility seems like just another way for the narrator to evade
responsibility for his actions.

The Black Cat ~ Notes 4

 Timeline of events:

We meet the man in his jail cell writing the story of his life, the day before he's
scheduled to be executed.

As a youth he was mellow and kind.

He loved animals and his favorite thing was spending time with them.

When he marries a woman who also likes animals, they get many pets,
including a big, black cat named Pluto.

He and Pluto have a great relationship.

Even when the man starts drinking and starts verbally and physically abusing
his wife and the other pets, he leaves Pluto alone.

At first.

When Pluto gets on his nerves, he cuts out one of his eyes.

Not longer after, he hangs Pluto from a tree, killing him

When his house burns down that night, the narrator loses all his wealth, and is
forced to move.

One night, while drinking, he meets a black that looks just like Pluto.

It follows him home.

This cat stays near the narrator all the time, and makes him crazy.

When the cat follows the man and his wife down to the cellar of the old house
they have to live in, he tries to kill it with an axe.

His wife stops him and he kills her instead, walling up her body in the cellar.

The police suspect the man of doing something to his wife, and search his
house.

When they are about to leave, he hits the wall behind which the dead body is
hidden.

The voice of the cat responds, and the police tear down the wall and find the
body, with the black cat sitting on its head

The Black Cat ~ Notes 5

 The Black Cat timeline.
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The narrator loved animals from his childhood, and had quite a lot of them.

Even when he gets older, his love for animals keeps growing. He has many of
them, and enjoys taking care of them.

He finds his love, a wife who also loves animals, and together they have many
animals in their house. His favorite is their black cat, Pluto.

He started having alcohol problems, which led to him physically and verbally
abusing his wife and his pets.

One night, the narrator comes home completely drunk. The cat bites him, and
thinking the cat doesn't like him, he grabs the cat and cuts his eye out with a
knife. In the morning he decides to hang the cat, even though he knows it is
wrong. He hangs Pluto from a tree in his garden.

The night of the murder, their house mysteriously burns down. The day after,
he returns to the house and finds a picture of a cat being hanged on his
bedroom wall.

One night after a heavy night drinking, he finds a black cat similar to Pluto,
with an eye missing but with a white spot on its chest. He decides to bring
the cat home with him, but soon after he starts disliking it. It follows him
everywhere, and he can not even get a single nights rest.

He despises the cat so much, that he wants to kill it. He brings it down in the
basement with his wife, where he swings an axe at the cat, but misses and
axe-identally hits his wife in the head - killing her. He hides the corpse in a
wall, thinking no one will ever find it.

The Black Cat ~ Notes 6

 Soon after, the police arrives at his house, questioning about his missing wife.
They do not find anything, and while in the basement he brags about how well
the house is built. He hits the wall with his cane, and to his surprise a noise
answers his knock: like a cry or a baby, but inhumane. The police are on it and
they open up the wall to see the body, with the cat sitting on top of her head.

Time and physical setting

Both the exact time and the setting of the story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan
Poe are omitted. We do not know in which city, year, or month the events
narrated happened. However, we can assume the author intended the story to be
read as a contemporary one, taking place sometime in the 1840s. The fact that
the story is not very exact regarding time and physical setting contributes to
creating a sense of mystery fitting for a horror story.

The main events span over a few months, since the night the narrator first
tortured Pluto, taking the animal’s eye out, until the police find his wife’s body
together with the new black cat.

Specific elements of the setting include the narrator’s initial house, which is burnt
down, and the cellar of his second house. The first house the narrator lived in is
depicted as having been filled with various types of animals, collected because
both him and his wife are animal lovers: “We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog,
rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.” (p. 1, l. 24. The house also has a garden with
a tree which the narrator uses to hang Pluto (ll. 9799. Particular attention is
given to one of the walls of the house after it burns down, where an impression of
the hanged black cat was preserved.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is the message of the Black Cat?
The message of 'The Black Cat' is that guilt is inescapable and has far-reaching
consequences.

What is the plot of the Black Cat?

The Black Cat ~ Notes 7

 'The Black Cat' is the story of an alcoholic who is driven insane by his addiction.
He tortures and kills his cat, Pluto. Then, a stray cat that looks almost exactly like
the cat he murdered except for a gallows mark on its chest follows him home and
drives him even more insane.

What is the purpose of the black cat?

In the opening paragraph of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat," the
narrator states that his "immediate purpose is to place before the world ... a
series of mere household events." In other words, he wishes to explain to the
world a series of events that occurred in his household.

Why did the narrator kill his wife in the Black Cat?
It's this cat who the narrator is too afraid to abuse (and who torments him) that
he blames for his increasingly abusive behavior toward his wife. One day he tries
to kill the cat (again?, but his wife defends it, and he kills her instead.

What does alcohol symbolize in the Black Cat?

Alcohol: While the narrator begins to view the black cat as an outward
manifestation of everything the narrator views as evil and unholy, blaming the
animal for all his woes, it is his addiction to drinking, more than anything else,
that seems to be the true reason for the narrator's mental decline.

How does the narrator behave in the black cat?

The narrator commits heinous acts while drunk and although he feels remorse his
guilt fuels paranoia and his actions pave the way to madness and self-
destruction.

How does the black cat end?

The story ends when the police find the dead body of the man's wife, with
the cat on her head. ... For example, we know the narrator is writing his

The Black Cat ~ Notes 8

 confession the day before he's scheduled to be executed for the murder of his
wife.

Is the narrator in the Black Cat insane?

“The Black Cat”: Is He Crazy? Brent Reed. In “The Black Cat”, by Edgar Allen Poe,
the narrator commits a brutal murder of his wife and also tortures and kills many
of his own pets. ... At first glance, his actions do seem to make him appear insane
but there is evidence in his story that shows that he is not really crazy.

The Black Cat ~ Notes 9