COMPILATION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS

1. Stylistic Devices: An Analysis of "The Black Cat" by Edgar

Discussing the style of this short story, Poe vividly presents elements of the
supernatural, the evil side of human nature and madness, which place “The Black
Cat” in the gothic genre. Thrill, suspense and horror are often evoked by gothic
elements. The black cats living with the narrator appear to be supernatural. The
narrator’s wife confronts him with this idea in the following lines: “...my wife, who at
heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient
popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (p.1, l.27f). The
second black cat that comes to him features two strange elements: like Pluto, it has
only one eye, as well as a white mark shaped into gallows. This could be a peculiar
kind of mystical penalty for killing Pluto.

Another typical topic in gothic pieces of writing is the evil side of the human
nature and the appearance of madness. The narrator claims that he is not mad at
the beginning of the story, whereas obviously he is mad due to his transformation
from a tender-hearted and a true animal lover to an abuser and killer of his pets and
his beloved wife. He commits perverse deeds and excuses himself by claiming that
that some of this perverseness lives in all of us, saying: “[...] perverseness is one of
the primitive impulses of the human heart -- one of the indivisible primary faculties,
or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred
times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than
because he knows he should not ?” (p.2, l.29ff)

Another gothic element that Poe applies in “The Black Cat” is choosing a
gothic surrounding, particularly the cellar of the house, where the narrator hid his
wife’s body. The narrator describes the house as an “old building” (p.5, l.4f) with
“steep stairs” (p.5, l.5f). “Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been
plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere
had prevented from hardening” (p.5, l.22ff). By describing the cellar in detail, the
author creates an image in the reader’s mind that evokes mystery.

Poe adapts his writing style depending on the emotional state of the narrator.
He uses short sentences when discussing his childhood, “From my infancy I was
noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition” (p.1, l.12), his wife, “I married
early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own”
(p.1, l.22) and even Pluto, “I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went
about the house” (p.1, l.31f). When he describes the change for the worse, the
sentences are longer and more complex; for example, “But my disease grew upon
me -- for what disease is like Alcohol ! -- and at length even Pluto, who was now
becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish -- even Pluto began to
experience the effects of my ill temper” (p.2, l.7ff). Moreover, the complex sentences
indicate the complex mind of the narrator. “Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my
wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the
animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I
wished” (p.5, l.7ff) contains several clauses and complex ideas.

Furthermore, Poe uses polysyndeton and asyndeton to make the utterances

of the protagonist appear more dramatic and vivid by describing many details. In the
sentence “It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name -- and
for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster
had I dared…” (p.4, l.32), the multiple repetition of the conjunction “and” adds more
stress to the moment. Poe also uses asyndeton to dramatise horrible actions, such
as “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast
by the throat” (p.2, l.15), and emotional state, such as “One night, returning home,
much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town” (p.2, l.11) and “I blush, I burn, I
shudder…” (p.2, l.17). Omitting the conjunctions out accelerates the rhythm of the
utterances and hence evokes a more dramatic and horrific atmosphere.

In order to convey to the reader a sense of the emerging horror, Poe uses the
literary devices of fronting and foreshadowing. Poe uses fronting to make the reader
anticipate an insane protagonist. In the second and third sentences of “The Black
Cat”, Poe uses fronting to emphasise the madness of the narrator: “Mad indeed
would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream” (p.11, l.2). Accordingly, the
reader gain an impression of the narrator very early on, prompting the assumption of
a mad protagonist. Moreover, he uses foreshadowing hints to increase the sense of
horror for the upcoming execution on the gallows. The first hint is the narrator
informing in the first paragraph “But to-morrow I die” (p.1, l.3). Another obvious hint
is him mentioning his wife making “frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,
which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (p.1, l.28f). Some less obvious
hints include the hanging of Pluto, the impression of a hanged cat and the shaped
gallows of white hair on the second cat. Therefore, the reader still already knows
that the narrator is facing his penalty.

Despite the narrator’s poor conditions and madness, his vocabulary is rather
formal and sophisticated. Although he uses common words like “beautiful” (p.1, l.26),
“tenderness” (p.1, l.13), “happy” (p.1, l.15), “love” (p.1, l.19) and “friendship” (p.1,
l.35) mainly when talking about his childhood and his wife at the beginning, the high-
flown word choice dominates in this short story. Moreover, he uses some poetic
words such as “Alas!” (p.5, l.2), which indicate a cultivated style of speech.
Furthermore, the narrator’s language is full of religious terms like “Fiend
Intemperance” (p.1, l.36), “sin” (p.2, l.42), “immortal soul” (p.2, l.26), “evil” (p.4, l.44)
and “Arch-Fiend” (p.6, l.24), which show his knowledge of the Bible.

In terms of the Bible, the narrator not only uses religious terms, he also
quotes verses or phrases from the Bible; for example, “Here at least, then, my labor
has not been in vain” (p.5, l.35f) and “But my God shield and deliver me from the
fangs of the Arch-Fiend” (p.6, l.23). These allusions indicate that the narrator is
educated in this domain. In contrast to the Christian domain, where God is the ruler
of the world and will return to earth to judge people according to their deeds one
day, the name of the cat alludes to an ancient mythology where Pluto is the ruler of
the underworld. The assumption arises that Poe intentionally used this name as a
symbol for justice in the story. This puts the cat in a supernatural creature and the
reader might associate Pluto’s “coming back” to take his revenge with the second
coming of the Lord.

Poe applies a strong variety of stylistic devices to create and present an

authentic portrait of the characters, describe the setting and events or evoke the
gothic mood in “The Black Cat”. Poe enriches this short story with images by
comparing his thoughts and behaviour with tragic things. He applies numerous
metaphors to depict the narrator’s change of the inner world and distance himself
from his guilt in consuming an excess of alcohol and the vicious deeds that he
knows will happen. In this respect, examples include “This peculiarity of character
grew with my growth” (p.1, l.16), “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me” (p.2,
l.13), “…and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed” (p.2, l.22), “And then
came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS”
(p.2, l.27f) and “Many projects entered my mind” (p.5, l.14f). These metaphors make
the narrator appear as the victim rather than the criminal as he blames Pluto as “the
hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder” (p.6, l.34f) at the end.
Another metaphor that Poe skilfully uses to depict the inner life of the narrator is the
eyes of Pluto, given that eyes are known as the mirror’s soul. After cutting out one of
the cat’s eyes, he claims: “The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful
appearance” (p.2, l.23f). The narrator divides his soul in two parts and “cuts” one half
– the good one – out of himself. Shortly afterwards, he admits that the love for Pluto
“soon gave place to irritation” (p.2, l.27) and then came “the spirit of
PERVERSENESS” (p.2, l.28).

Furthermore, Poe uses several other comparing stylistic devices to intensify

the tragic atmosphere. He applies a simile to depict the changing perception of the
narrator; for instance, when he describes the answer of the cat to his rapping on the
wall as “a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then
quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and
inhuman” (p.6, l.25ff). He also employs metonymy by linking “GALLOWS” (p.4, l.34)
to death. In the utterance “In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall”
(p.6, l.32), we observe the case of synecdoche, whereby the “dozen stout arms”
refer to the policemen.

In order to emphasise the dramatic change of the narrator’s attitude towards

the cat, Poe includes periphrasis by choosing various substitutes for the word “cat”
(p.1, l.25), such as “playmate” (p.1, l.32), “animal” (p.3, l.27), “creature” (p.4, l.5),
“beast” (p.4, l.22) and “tormentor” (p.5, l.45), which show an increasing dissociation
with Pluto. Moreover, it is striking that after cutting out the eye of Pluto the narrator
uses the personal pronoun “it” to refer to Pluto, instead of saying “he” (p.1, l.3) as
usual. This shift further signifies the increased distance.Poe applies numerous
epithets to more vibrantly describe characters and settings. The epithets “equivocal
feeling” (p.2, l.21), “cruel deed” (p.2, l.45), “hideous murder” (p.5, l.12), “immortal
soul” (p.2, l.42), “fiendish malevolence” (p.2, l.15), “damnable atrocity” (p.2, l.18),
“evil thoughts” (p.4, l.44) and many others emphasise gothic mysterious and horrific
features of the story. Moreover, these epithets create suitable images in fewer
words, which is beneficial for such a short story.
2. Poe's Short Stories Summary and Analysis of The Black Cat

"The Black Cat" bears close similarities with the story of the "The Tell-Tale
Heart" in that it begins with an unnamed narrator who has been apprehended for
murder and who insists that he cannot be insane before he begins an account of
a murder that he committed. Unlike "The Tell-Tale Heart," however, we have a
man who is aware of the transformation in himself that has led him to become a
murderer, although he cannot totally explain it, and we even have a potential
cause for his insanity in the form of alcohol. Whereas the protagonist of "The
Tell-Tale Heart" explains his case for murder as if his logic were obvious and
inevitable, the narrator of "The Black Cat" is on some level aware of his
unreasonableness, although he chooses to ignore it and succumb to the baser
human emotions of perversity and hatred.

One aspect of the narrator's personality that he shares with several of

Poe's characters is that despite his overall lack of normal ethics and good
judgment, he uses some reason and logic to avoid admissions of his mental
abnormality. In particular, when he sees the image of his cat on the one
remaining wall of his house after it burns down, he tries to ignore superstition and
offer a reasonable, scientific explanation for its existence. Ironically, the only
superstitious member of his household is his wife, who consistently shows a
strong moral character despite the abuses and deterioration of her husband.
Given that in "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator's main proof of his sanity is his
rational mind, the contrast between the wife and husband in "The Black Cat"
suggests that the difference between a normal mind and an unhealthy one is that
the unhealthy mind uses logic to explain away what a normal mind would
intuitively understand. Rather than allowing himself to use his wits to recognize
the possible significance of the cat's image on the wall, he convinces himself of
the scientific explanation in order to forestall thinking about his guilt.

The supernatural elements of "The Black Cat" leave open the question of
how much is real, how much can be rationally explained, and how much is a
product of the narrator's imagination. Pluto's possible magical significance is first
noted by the wife, who states that black cats are said to be witches in disguise,
although her kind treatment of Pluto indicates that she does not put much faith in
this particular superstition. The narrator explicitly dismisses this viewpoint, but
the superstition flavors his entire story. When he observes the image of the cat
on the wall, he describes it as gigantic; he previously described Pluto as fairly
large, but whether the size of the image is an expression of the paranormal or
simply a product of his frightened imagination is difficult to say. Similarly, the
narrator claims that the patch of fur on the cat transforms from an "indefinite
splotch" to the specific image of the gallows, but we have no evidence that the
narrator is observing anything more than the twisting of his own mind.

The narrator speaks specifically about the spirit of perverseness that

combines with his alcohol dependence to provide the impetus for his
transformation into a murderer. He is particularly careful to explain how perversity
drives him to hang his cat Pluto, and at the time, he understands the evil of his
crime and even feels some measure of guilt over it. The sign of his decreasing
sanity comes as much from his lack of guilt over killing his wife as it does from
the actual act of burying his axe in her skull. His explanation that perverseness is
"one of the primitive impulses of the human heart" is called into question because
of his madness, but at the same time, the story makes us wonder about the truth
of his assertion. On the one hand, perverseness might seem natural to the
narrator precisely because he was already prone to it, despite what he claims
was his previously innocent personality. On the other hand, perhaps he is correct
in that perversity exists in all men but is merely aggravated in him.

"The Black Cat" is in many ways a moral tale that deals with the tension
between love and hate and that warns of the dangers of alcohol, a substance to
which Poe himself was addicted for much of his life. The narrator appears at first
to love both his wife and his pets, but by the end of the story his fondness has
turned to neglect, spite, and even hatred, particularly for Pluto and his successor.
Although Poe does not provide a solid explanation for the narrator's encroaching
loss of sanity, perhaps suggesting that madness might happen at any time to any
person, the narrator admits the role of alcohol in his behavior. In addition, the
arrival of the second cat is closely related to his alcoholism, since he first finds
the cat in a seedy drinking establishment. The second cat ultimately serves as
the facilitator of justice when it reveals the corpse's hiding place at the end of the
tale, and its initial appearance on top of a hogshead of gin or rum emphasizes its
moral purpose.
3. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat: Summary & Analysis

Throughout the opening paragraph of “The Black Cat,” the reader is

introduced to a narrator who, because of his grotesque actions, has become
mentally deranged and very untrustworthy, ” . . . my very senses reject their own
evidence.”  The narration of this story is in the first person, which would lead you
to believe the narrator could be trusted to relate to you the true events of the
story, but this is false.  The narrator in this story is unreliable due to his horrid
state of mind and body.  The narrator cannot be relied upon to show the reader
the true events of the story, these events have to be interpreted and the reader
must come to his own conclusion as to what really happened.

The reader is shown in the opening paragraph that he should not trust the
narrator to deliver the true events of the story. The narrator admits throughout the
story that his bad habits, namely alcoholism,  lead to his irrational state of mind. 
His alcoholism was the root of his downfall.  While intoxicated, the narrator
mutilated his favourite pet, Pluto, causing the cat to become terrified of his
master.  The alienation of his cat gave the narrator even more cause to become
mentally unstable.

The hanging of his cat shows how the narrator has become obsessed with
doing evil things for the sake of their evilness.  This evilness is linked to his
alcoholism.  The narrator was most-likely in a drunken state when he hung his
cat, which only infuriated his temper.  This separation of friends had a huge effect
on the narrator’s deadly temper.  His temper is such that anything that slightly
annoyed him caused him to go into fits of rage.

The fits of rage which occupy the narrator for much of the story are all
linked to his pet cats.  He points out that he was an animal lover in his younger
days and the feeling was carried through into his maturity.  His love for animals
ended here.  His alcoholism had driven him to avoid his animals or, when he
encountered them, to physically harm them for the reason that they were there. 
The narrator’s pet cat’s were the exceptions.  He held his temper back from his
cats because of his love for them.  This feeling disappears after time and the cats
become the subject of his worst fits of rage.

After each violent act upon his cats, the narrator did feel remorse at his
actions.  This feeling also disappears over time and, as it disappeared, his rage
grew.  The narrator seems to have had the feeling that they (the animals) must
pay for what they have done.  Tiny scratches upon the narrators hand
necessitated Pluto losing an eye.  He also seems to be upset that his cats love
him and want to be around him.  He felt he should be the one to love them and
they should not be allowed to love.  This is shown through his annoyance at their
constant presence around him.   He must be the one in control, and be able to
make other things do what he wants.

The fits of rage which he encountered are finally brought to a culmination

when his wife stops his attempted murder of their new cat.  The narrator is so
mad at his wife that he takes the worst possible action.  He kills her. The murder
of his wife seems to be the real end for the narrator.  He feels little guilt for his
actions, “The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me little.”  The reason for his lack of
guilt is that he does not believe he has done anything wrong.  His conscience
has become so deteriorated that nothing seems to affect him anymore.

When an outsider looks at the events of the story, it is obvious that the
narrator is untrustworthy.  The alcoholism, which affects the narrator for much of
his adult life can be seen as the root of his problems.  The alcoholism leads to
other problems in his life, such as his horrible fits of rage, and his utter disliking of
his once prized pets.  In his mentally deranged state, the narrator cannot be
trusted to deliver the true events of the story.  Therefore the reader must take it
upon himself to interpret the events of the story and come up with his own
conclusion as to what really happened, and why they happened.
4. In between illusion and reality: An Analysis Of Edgar Allan Poe's The Black
Cat

“The Black Cat” deals with such a narrator who experiences a mental
change that the readers cannot differentiate whether it is caused by his
psychological disorders or his transcendental believing, creating a link between
the illusion and reality. The narrator is unreliable (“The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan
Poe”) whom discourses are doubtable as he states at the very beginning of the
story by telling he does not await to any deem or trust on him or what he says.
He admits this loss of credibility via expressing that “his own senses also refuse
their own confirmation”, yet he watches for some trust on “he is not mad or does
not dream” (Poe, pars. 1). This contradict composes the aforementioned link
between the illusion and reality, by the addition of his originally not existing and
disregarded by the narrator, however later on, growing on him superstitions. The
transcendental aspect of superstitions adds more to the “illusion” side of the link,
whereas the narrator’s effort on giving a reasonable explanation to every single
unearthly event, actually calling them “household events”, tries to push the
weight to the “reality” side. Poe accomplishes a successful intricacy by keeping
the balance on the link throughout the whole story. 

The narrator deals with some severe mental issues and he is tormented
by his own mind (Shmoop Editorial Team). He is in the awareness of a
personality transformation happening and even though he tries to come up with
logical justifications such as abusive use of alcohol, he cannot flat-out define the
exact reason. Throughout the story, from beginning to end, there is a well
apprehensible view of a meek person’s change into a murderer, from nice to evil,
which is an outcome of a psychological disorder occurs from an unknowing
origin. By the time this change realizes, which some approach as the result of
alcoholism, some approach as his loss of credibility due to growing superstitious
beliefs within him, and some approach as he only acts as if he is losing his sanity
to be freed from his death, he pens that “all the good within him succumbed”
(Poe, pars. 22). He never really gives a precise information on the change, yet he
constantly mentions on it, which creates the question on the readers’ mind that if
he might be using this mentally unstable state of his to indeed avoid gallows. If
he is having serious psychological issues, he can convince judges on he is not
guilty -leastwise he is not guilty as a person with a sturdy sanity. This fact may
save him from the death, therefore it can be considered as the narrator is not
insane, he is only pretending.

Withal the possibility that the narrator himself may be making up the
mental disorder issues to avoid his punishment, there is another presumption
which in point of fact predominates further, and that is, as the narrator also
suggests, the spirit of perverseness. The spirit of perverseness is what makes
people do things they know will be bad for themselves and others (LitCharts
Editors). Poe shapes a character who not only turns into an evil person day by
day, but also who is aware of his dreadful moral issues, yet keeps acting worse
and worse as each day goes. While his drinking concerns gets inextricable, his
behaviour towards his animals and wife gets brutal, his murder of Pluto, later the
second cat that resembles the Pluto, and even his wife, despite the existence of
slight oddments of sorrow imagery, he does not genuinely feel regret. He pens
his action of gouging out Pluto’s one eye, saying he does blush, shudder and
burn, yet he does not give signal of these gestures right along his wife’s murder,
even he expresses that duration in a plain, matter-of-fact tone. All along he is
fully aware of the wrongs he is doing, nonetheless with the moral insanity
condition, the spirit of perverseness, he has, he carries on with the truculence. 
Besides all these psychological conditions, some also approach the narrator’s
mental or moral changes occur as his unrealistic, transcendental beliefs become
apparent, which the readers, in the story, firstly come across via the narrator’s
wife and her comments on Pluto, yet later on realize how the narrator himself
also begins to grow a strong belief of black cats are actually witches in disguise.

The idea of that black cats represent death, sorcery, bad luck and
witchcraft slowly captures the narrator’s mind. This finding becomes easy to
come up with since the man and the woman named their cat after the Roman
God of the Dead, Pluto (Womack). This superstition element may be approached
in two different ways. Firstly, it can be said that, again as stated above, he might
be using the fact that Pluto is a witch in disguise and the cause to all of the
massacre that had been done, to make people believe in him that he is indeed
innocent, to avoid his death. The other approach can be put across as he is
going mad, even though he insists on he is not mad or he does not dream. While
he blinks the fact that his wife is a superstitious woman and he acts as if he stays
away from all the supernatural beliefs, he finally follows the same path along with
his wife. The narrator endeavours to give reasonable explanation to the incidents
he has been going through by calling them simple “household events” even
though he, inwardly, believes that they are unearthly events indeed. 
5. Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe's The Black Cat
6. The Real Meaning Behind Poe’s “The Black Cat”

Brace yourself… There was no cat. Of course, such a lofty claim begs for
reason and proper explanation — which I will provide — but first, a quick
rundown of the story. The Black Cat is short piece of fiction in which the narrator
lays out the events that lead to the death of his (SPOILER ALERT) wife. His
confession appears to be an attempt to convince the reader that a series of black
cats acted upon him in a supernatural manner, possessing him to act violent.

The narrator establishes himself as quite fond of animals. He enjoys,

“caressing them,” and referred to them as one of his, “principal sources of
pleasure.” Fortunately for the narrator his wife shares similar sentiment for
animals, which allows him to live in a house that could be likened to a personal
zoo. Poe, through the narrator, litters the text with clues toward the narrator’s
perverse relationship with a particular black cat. Note the word brute from the
outset of the piece:

“There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute,

which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the
paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.”

After the narrator rips the black cat’s eye out, and before he hangs the cat
from the tree, he refers to him as, “the offending brute.” Later on, when another
black cat enters the narrator’s life he also refers to his new “friend” as a brute.
The term brute is interesting, especially for a feline given their domesticated
nature and smarts. Let’s examine both the American and British versions of the
definition of brute from the Cambridge Dictionary .

I don’t think it’s much of a leap for one to say that a brute can be a
reference to a man, and that in this case the cats referred to in the story are
indeed men. The term is less of a stretch when you examine the text further.
Before we do so we should establish that this narrator is completely unreliable.
Not only does he appear completely mad, he’s an alcoholic. Take this line
(before he cuts the first cat’s eye out) as evidence of his alcoholism and for more
insight into what’s going on in The Black Cat.

“One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts

about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.”

One of Poe’s rules for writing was to make sure every word in his piece is
necessary and adds to the story. Not only is the narrator speaking freely about
his unbecoming behaviour, we also see Poe’s penchant for playing with words
here, in reference to the word “haunt”. In a story that refers to the supernatural
using the term haunt here should strike the reader as important. While the noun
version of haunt can refer to a place frequently visited, such as a bar, it can also
refer to someone, commonly a ghost, that appears in a place repeatedly. Given
the structure of the sentence, the narrator could either be the person doing the
haunting, or the bar where he got intoxicated. Nevertheless, the writing is clever.
It should be mentioned that the narrator does reference a bar later in the story
as, “A den of infamy,” notably when he meets a second black cat — and if we
read it as if the cat were a man, this is where things get interesting.

“… but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering
nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately
arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my
notice.”

The narrator inquires to purchase him, the cat, from the landlord. If the
idea of purchasing a man seems wrong keep in mind that slavery was still legal
in the United States during Poe’s lifetime. To be fair, Poe lived in Boston when he
began publishing his work, however, he spent a large part of his life in the state
of Virginia, which didn’t abolish slavery until the end of the civil war. Couple this
with the narrator hanging the first black cat from a tree and imagery of the horrors
encountered by blacks in the United States during this time period begin to fill
one’s mind. If The Black Cat wasn’t disturbing enough, reading it through this
lens heightens the horror.

The narrator’s inner turmoil is more explainable with this theory. The
narrator may very well be attracted to, even in love, with a black man. He would
never be able to share such a thing in this time period. This very thing could
create enough shame in the narrator to drive him mad given the state of society
at this time. Furthermore, the narrator’s affection, both physically and mentally,
for his wife is never touched upon. However, it is in reference to the cat.

“I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal

evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally
stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it
domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my
wife.”

Translation: “I found a new man at the bar. I caressed him, and he

followed him home (and continued to touch him along the way). When I got
home, my wife was happy. We had a servant again.”… shortly followed by…

“For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was
just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but — I know not how or why it was —
its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees,
these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I
avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my
former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it.”

What’s the easiest way for this narrator to get rid of his shame? Kill the
wife. Killing the cat didn’t work the first time, so the wife, who symbolically
reminds him of his failure as a husband, is the next logical step. What’s the best
way to explain oneself after this act, while concealing the true motive for the
murder? Say the cat possessed you. His unreliability forces us to play detective,
reading between the lines.

Ann V. Bliss touches on the narrator’s struggle with masculinity in her

paper, “Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat.” While
she doesn’t go as far to say that the cat was a man, she does look at the piece
from a gendered lens. She concludes that the killing of the narrator’s wife was his
most excessively masculine act. Such a reading of The Black Cat by myself or
Bliss might be looked upon as controversial, however, Poe’s work touches on
murder — the controversial is unavoidable. Poe’s narrators often don’t tell the
whole story, such as in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, forcing
the reader to hypothesize based on what’s between the lines of the story. It’s fair
to say that the narrators in Poe’s stories do not feel comfortable to share their
truths, either in an attempt to proclaim some sort of innocence, or that the truth
was less explainable or accepted than the real reasons behind the hideous acts.
7. Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short
Stories (1894)

Earlier this month, we featured Oscar Wilde's scandalous play Salome as

illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in 1894. Though Beardsley's short life and career
would end a scant four years later at the age of 25, the illustrator still had more
than enough time to develop a clear and bold, yet elaborate and even decadent
style, still immediately recognizable and deeply influential today.
He also managed to visualize an impressively wide range of material, one that
includes — in the very same year — the transgressively witty writing of Oscar
Wilde as well as the groundbreakingly macabre writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

"Aubrey Beardsley’s four Poe illustrations were commissioned by Herbert

S. Stone and Company, Chicago, in 1894 as embellishment for a multi-volume
collection of the author’s works," writes artist and designer John Coulthart. "The
Black Cat (above) is justifiably the most reproduced of these." The Literary
Archive blog argues that "what Beardsley’s illustrations do tell us of is that Poe’s
stories are not static, but living works that each new generation gets to
experience in [its] own way," and that they "give us a glimpse into a slight
decadence and gothic-ness still preferred in horror at the time (a giant orangutan
envelopes the girl in his arms—King Kong anyone?)"

They also remind us that "our taste for creepiness, for hearing tales about
the darker side of human life, hasn’t changed appreciably in over 150 years." If
the American author and the English illustrator would seem to make for odd
literary and artistic bedfellows, well, therein lies the appeal: when one strong
creative sensibility comes up against another, things can well go off in the kind of
richly bizarre directions you see hinted at in the images here.
8. The many interpretations of Poe’s “The Black Cat”, and an analysis of its
narration style

‘The Black Cat’ is a short story by the famous American poet and writer
Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known to be part of the American Romantic movement,
and is famous for his writings that incorporate mystery and macabre. Elements of
both Romanticism and Gothic movements are present in this short story, making
‘The Black Cat’ a prime example of Gothic Romantic literature. Poe’s use of tone,
narration-style, and symbols keeps the reader engulfed in the story, leaving it
open to multiple thought-provoking interpretations.

The tone in this short story interesting, and I would like to argue that the
use of tone is the best literary device used in this story. At first read, I found this
story very disturbing. I was horrified at the crooked working of the narrator’s
mind, and yet I found myself also understanding his perspective. I thought the
cats must have possessed the narrator, to a point that all the violence against the
poor cats felt justified. The tone is set by the narrator, who can fall under the
“unreliable narrator” trope, a trope that is also seen in Poe’s short story ‘Tell-Tale
Heart’. In this story the reader explores the narrator’s moral downfall, as the 1st
person narrator lays out to the reader the events that led him to murder his wife.

Words such as ‘brute’, terrified’, ‘tortured’, etc. are dispersed all over the
story, creating an altogether dark atmosphere. Since these words were present
from the very beginning, the eventual change of the narrator’s moral character
seemed natural and slow to me. This however, I found especially startling later,
upon reading different interpretations of the story. It was stupefying to see myself
to even empathize to extent with the narrator, even after the sinister turn of
events. The trick that the writer used to create this effect, was: Romanticism.
When the story begins, the narrator seems melancholic about a past when he
“was noted for (his)… docility and humanity”. This style of writing, where a past is
often idealized is a quality of Romantic literature. However, because of the dark
tone in the story, we can say that The Black Cat’s genre falls under the subgenre
of Gothic/ Dark Romanticism. Ira Mark Milne1 describes Dark Romanticism as
“characters (are) struggling to keep up with their emotions (and) escape from the
true reality of life” (Vol. 2: 705–743).

In ‘The Black Cat’ Edgar Allan Poe does leave such a delicate effect. By
crafting a story where each and every word brings effect to his story, Poe tricks
readers like me to think that the narrator’s words are logical. David Lodge2 in his
book “The Art of Fiction” also examines Edgar Allan Poe’s narration style and
concludes that Poe is indeed cunning; he uses the narrator’s voice to complicate
the response from us readers who are outside the text. We do not know if we
want to trust the narrator, and even when we do; like I did, we soon become
more skeptical through a second reading. It is because of all of this that I think
the tone used is the best literary device in this story.
The second captivating thing about this literary piece is its underlying
symbolism. The cats, and the violence inflicted on them, the unburnt
“compartment … that rested above’” the narrator’s head, all have hidden
meanings. First of all, I was especially fascinated when under inspection I found
the fact that the cat was named after the Roman god of death: Pluto. This brings
an ominous effect about the story, which is in other words, is as I mentioned,
fascinating. The second mentionable symbolism lies in the carving out of Pluto’s
eye. When the narrator does that, it is symbolic to his blinding himself; from that
point forward the narrator’s ethical standpoint is broken forever. Lastly, Poe
paints a picture of horror and mystery when the narrator’s entire home is burnt
down to ashes, and only one compartment with a “gigantic figure” of a cat
remains. This might have suggested the durability of the narrator’s remorse, or
hatred for the cat. This short story would not have been the same without this
use of symbols, and I greatly enjoyed spotting them while reading the story.

Just like any form of art, Poe’s work also welcomes different
interpretations. As I mentioned before, my first interpretation was at face value.
Even though I adore felines, and the descriptions of the violence on the cats did
annoy me, they somehow still seemed justified at first read. However, when we
keep in mind that the person narrating has committed murder, and is an
alcoholic, we can establish the fact that the narrator is completely unreliable. And
when I read the story from that perspective, I found it deeply upsetting, where the
descriptions by Poe bring out only anger me. There are however, even bigger
claims in terms of interpretation of this story. In her paper “Household Horror:
Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat.”, Ann V. Bliss3 analyses The Black
Cat through the lens of the narrator’s struggle with masculinity’. She argues that
the narrator’s affection towards animals, and being gentle throughout his early
days was feminine, and the eventual killing of the narrator’s wife was his most
excessive masculine act. Another controversial claim can be made that in the
short saying that the cat was actually a black man, and this story was about a
love affair between a white man and men of color who met at a bar. This
argument is put forward by A. George in his online essay4 is that the story was
about homosexual love at a time when it was forbidden, and slavery was still in
practice. Meaning the adopted cats were actually servants, who the narrator had
extra marital affairs with.

All these responses to this famous short story are overwhelming and are
very logical in their debate, thus making Poe successful as a writer by bringing so
much discussion over his short story. While this short story is definitely
disturbing, ominous in its tone and mysterious in its symbolism, it is these very
attributes that make it one of the greatest Gothic Romantic pieces of literature.
“The Black Cat” inspired many adaptations in film and also a few artists and
illustrations; one of my favorite Art-Nouveau illustrators, Beardsley5, in fact drew
a haunting illustration for this very short story. It is evident that Poe left a mark in
literature since this short story is still relevant today, represented both in media,
and in educational institutions, two centuries after it was first published.
9. "The Black Cat" Study Guide: Edgar Allen Poe's Dark Tale of Descent Into
Madness

Symbols are a key component of Poe's dark tale, particularly the following
ones.

The black cat: More than just the title character, the black cat is also an
important symbol. Like the bad omen of legend, the narrator believes Pluto and
his successor have led him down the path toward insanity and immorality. 

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.

House and home: "Home sweet home" is supposed to be a place of safety

and security, however, in this story, it becomes a dark and tragic place of
madness and murder. The narrator kills his favorite pet, tries to kill its
replacement, and goes on to kill his own wife. Even the relationships that should
have been the central focus of his healthy and happy home fall victim to his
deteriorating mental state. 

Prison: When the story opens, the narrator is physically in prison,

however, his mind was already imprisoned by the shackles of madness,
paranoia, and alcohol-induced delusions long before he was apprehended for his
crimes. 

The wife: The wife could have been a grounding force in the narrator's life.
He describes her as having "that humanity of feeling." Rather than saving him, or
at least escaping with her own life, she becomes a horrible example of innocence
betrayed. Loyal, faithful, and kind, she never leaves her husband no matter how
low he sinks into the depths of depravity. Instead, it is he who is in a sense
unfaithful to his marriage vows. His mistress, however, is not another woman, but
rather his obsession with drinking and the inner demons his drinking unleashes
as symbolically personified by the black cat. He forsakes the woman he loves—
and eventually kills her because he can't break the hold of his destructive
obsession.

Love and hate are two key themes in the story. The narrator at first loves
his pets and his wife, but as madness takes hold of him, he comes to loathe or
dismiss everything that should be of the utmost importance to him. Other major
themes include:

Justice and truth: The narrator tries to hide the truth by walling up his
wife's body but the voice of the black cat helps bring him to justice.

Superstition: The black cat is an omen of bad luck, a theme that runs
throughout literature. 

Murder and death: Death is the central focus of the entire story. The
question is what causes the narrator to become a killer.

Illusion versus reality: Does the alcohol release the narrator's inner
demons, or is it merely an excuse for his horrendous acts of violence? Is the
black cat merely a cat, or something embued with a greater power to bring about
justice or exact revenge?

Loyalty perverted: A pet is often seen as a loyal and faithful partner in life
but the escalating hallucinations the narrator experiences propel him into
murderous rages, first with Pluto and then with the cat the replaces him. The pets
he once held in highest affection become the thing he most loathes. As the man's
sanity unravels, his wife, whom he also purports to love, becomes someone who
merely inhabits his home rather than shares his life. She ceases to be a real
person, and when she does, she is expendable. When she dies, rather than feel
the horror of killing someone he cares for, the man's first response is to hide the
evidence of his crime.

Key Quotes: Poe's use of language enhance the story's chilling impact.
His stark prose is the reason this and other of his tales have endured. Key
quotes from Poe's work echo its themes.
 On reality vs. illusion: "For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which
I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief." 

On loyalty: "There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of

a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to
test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man." 

On superstition: "In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was

not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient
popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise." 

On alcoholism: "...my disease grew upon me—for what disease is like

Alcohol!—and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and
consequently somewhat peevish—even Pluto began to experience the effects of
my ill temper." 

On transformation and descent into insanity: "I knew myself no longer. My

original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than
fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame." 

On murder: "This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow.

It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its
own nature—to do wrong for the wrong's sake only—that urged me to continue
and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute." 

On evil: "Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble

remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates—the darkest and most evil of thoughts." 
10. The Unspeakable: Fearing Madness in Poe's "The Black Cat"

A significant part of the pervasiveness of Edgar Allan Poe’s work is the fact
that he wrote his tales of horror with an emphasis on what everyday people feared.
He targeted what he knew to be massive fears of his own time and blew these fears
up into tales of suspense, horror, and the supernatural. Within “The Black Cat,” for
instance, Poe plays on the fear of madness, or a discernible lack of reason. The
narrator of “The Black Cat” displays several attributes of madness — he maims an
innocent cat, hangs it, kills his wife in a fit of temper, and finally hides her rotting
corpse behind a brick wall. Throughout the text, however, the narrator does not refer
to his condition as insanity: instead, he believes his choices and imprisonment were
caused by a list of extraordinary events out of his control. However, Poe’s readers
should see that alcoholism may have acted as a catalyst for the narrator’s descent
into insanity, but did not cause his later violent actions. This avoidance of madness
is the true fear being exploited within “The Black Cat”: the narrator adamantly
refuses to acknowledge the possibility he may be mad, and instead wholeheartedly
attributes his downfall to alcohol and events out of his control, because even in his
last hours, he fears being associated with madness.

In the beginning of “The Black Cat,” for instance, Poe’s narrator notes the
“docility and humanity” he had displayed as a young child (Poe 718). His penchant
for kindness and goodwill toward animals was praised by his family members. The
man grew older, married and lived with many animals, including a cat named Pluto
of which he was incredibly fond. However, this innocence changes when the “Fiend
Intemperance,” or alcohol, is introduced as the catalyst of his later madness. The
narrator tells readers that he 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...[and] offered her personal violence” (Poe 719). Initially caused by his
imbibing, the narrator experiences a radical personality shift that results in a much
different disposition from his earlier docility. He goes on to maim the cat, his dislike
for it growing afterwards into “irritation” (Poe 720), and eventually he hangs it outside
his house. Yet he vehemently protests this resulting from madness, saying “Mad
indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own
evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely I do not dream” (Poe 718).

He explains that madness in this instance might be expected, but he is not

affected by it. The narrator believes what he has to explain is potentially
unexplainable for the rational man, but as he thinks it truly happened, he must try to
detail the events preceding his downfall. Elsewhere, the narrator carves out the eye
of a favorite cat because the animal bites him in fear. He blames the “spirit of
perverseness” (Poe 720) for his murder of the same animal, which in truth he uses
to cover and rationalize his madness as something experienced by all human
beings. He skews this action, though, in order to garner sympathy and reasonable
responses to his story, asking “Who has not, a hundred times, found himself
committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he
should not” (Poe 720). He uses the bandwagon effect to make his story believable,
strongly reinforcing the idea that he is not mad. Doing this, the narrator attempts to
connect with his readership, or the person he is confessing to, in order to conceal or
overpower the idea he may be under the influence of madness and tilt the listener’s
beliefs toward the unexplainable and out of the fault of the narrator. His beginnings
of madness are shown in his experiences with Pluto, but the narrator doesn’t name
them due to the overlying stigma of being called mad. From the very first lines of the
story, he makes his beliefs clear saying, “For the most wild, yet most homely
narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief” (Poe 718): he
realizes his tale is out of the ordinary, but only wishes to “unburthen my soul” (Poe
718). The narrator’s reasoning does not come from within but from without, in his
surroundings. He hopes the person who listens to his story “will perceive, in the
circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects” (Poe 718). It is not his own personality, temperament, or
some defective combination of the two that causes tragedy to befall him but,
according to this narrator, something else.
 The narrator has already been condemned to die for his actions, though he
believes the succession of events leading to his confinement were out of his control
at least, and at most, supernatural. In her journal article titled “Untold Story: The
Lying Narrator in ‘The Black Cat,’” Susan Amper argues, “His tale is a fabrication, by
which he seeks to conceal the true nature of the crime, exactly as he sought in
walling up his wife’s body to conceal the fact of the crime” (475). The narrator’s
reasoning is definitely falsified in an effort to hide his murderous madness, but the
crime remains the same. His wife dies at his hands due to his unnatural dread of a
cat resembling the one he murdered. His madness overrides his reason, and in a
state of numb clarity, he is able to hide his wife’s body and carry on with his life. In
her journal article by titled “Diabolical Evil and ‘The Black Cat,’” author Magdalen
Wing-Chi Ki argues that “Poe’s narrator is ‘mad’ because his behavior deviates from
all the moral maxims in traditional ethics…his drive ethics is on the side of chaos,
madness, and death” (569). The entirety of “The Black Cat” is about the narrator
falling to madness, and while in its clutches, causing chaos to his loved ones.

Concerning the appearance of the second cat, it seems clear that the
narrator’s clouded conscience and guilt over Pluto, who he murdered brutally for no
tangible reason, played a definite part in its supposedly close resemblance to the
original feline. Amper agrees, saying “The doubtful nature of the narrator’s account
begins with the sheer improbability of his discovering a second cat virtually identical
to Pluto, right down to the missing eye” (482). This is but another reflection of the
madness that the narrator tries to hide. Consequently, his depiction of the cat should
not be taken as truth, since the narrator’s connection with reality is heavily debatable
throughout the text: he is unable to tell reality from his hallucinations. Another clear
indication of his inability to tell fantasy from reality is his hallucination of an image
within the white spot on the cat’s breast. When he first meets the new cat, he
describes the spot as an “indefinite splotch of white” (Poe 721), but later on claims to
see “the image of a hideous — of a ghastly thing — of the gallows” (722). In his
madness, he hallucinates an image of his guilt onto the cat, a seeming twin of his
first victim. In a journal article titled “Motive and Meaning: The Mystery of The Will of
Poe’s ‘The Black Cat,’” Joseph Stark argues that “not only, for instance, is the
narrator a confessed murderer, but his story also evidences a certain delusional
paranoia” (259-260). This story from the narrator cannot be taken at face value as
complete truth. Stark continues with, “when he blames his crime on human
depravity, we are skeptical of this solution, simply because he offers it” (260). His
madness greatly affects his ability to tell his narrative and can be seen in his
wavering ability to rationally explain his crime and its causes.

When the narrator finally kills his wife, his calm demeanor afterwards gives
him away. He represents someone without reason – uncaring and unfeeling. After
hiding his wife’s body, he says, “my next step was to look for the beast which had
been the cause of so much wretchedness” (Poe 723). He is entirely focused on the
cat. His wife’s death is an unhappy accident, but one that matters little compared to
the narrator’s hatred of the cat. Instead of feeling anything for his wife, he goes on to
say, “It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief
which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom” (Poe 723). No
guilt mars his conscience or disturbs him. He even notes how soundly and
peacefully he slept “even with the burden of murder upon my soul” (Poe 723). Amper
believes the narrator actually shows the guilt of his wife’s murder in his empathy
concerning the loss of Pluto because he is hiding the fact that his wife’s murder was
intentional (479). This interpretation is clever, though ultimately unhelpful in this
discussion. Whether the wife was murdered before or after the cat, or with intent or
not, the irrational way the narrator tells his story and his reported irrational acts
within it, are enough to see clear indications of a lack of reason, which ultimately
results in her murder and shows the narrator to be mad.

One major detail the narrator uses to avoid naming his madness as such is
alcohol, though his admitted unreliability makes any excuse he uses questionable.
Stark addresses this issue, saying alcohol as the narrator’s reason for murder “fails
to account for what drove him into alcoholism in the first place” (260). The narrator
introduces his addiction simply and without history, saying “through the
instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced
a radical alteration for the worse” (Poe 719). His drinking problem is explained to
have begun without reason, and is passed off as a momentarily lapse rather than a
lasting addiction. Wing-Chi Ki believes this change to be all-consuming, saying “Poe
invites his readers to see that alcohol has allowed the drive subject to push all
identification aside and enjoy a new being” (575). However, as Stark notes, alcohol
is not mentioned during the murder of his wife and attempted murder of the second
cat (260). Only in the maiming of Pluto is his imbibing mentioned: when he actually
hangs the cat, he says he does it “in cool blood” (Poe 720). No reasonable excuse
can account for his murder of the animal other than he wished to kill it and therefore
did so. The narrator is also shown to be completely sober when he ultimately ends
his wife’s life. He says, “Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish
dread which has hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal” (Poe 722)
and later, “goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal” (723).
Alcohol is not said to have been in his system at the time of the murder. His
madness, goaded into a frenzy by the cat and his wife’s intrusion in his attempted
murder of it, is the true reason behind his actions. Alcohol cannot be used as a
rational excuse because it is only used in the beginning of the story as explanation
for his original maiming of Pluto, and then not mentioned again for the rest “The
Black Cat.”

With his early alcoholism dismissed as a possibility behind his murderous

actions, the narrator is left unreliable and greatly under the influence of his madness.
However, the narrator refuses to acknowledge this because madness is the only line
he will not cross. He admits to the rest of his story – both of the murders, his illogical
rage, and apathetic emotions – but will not say he is mad. Poe clearly understood
widely feared topics and manipulated them in his texts to create horrifying stories
often reflecting similar themes. Madness, or the unnamed and avoided likeness of it,
is one such theme in “The Black Cat.” The maiming of Pluto, its eventual murder,
and the horrifying murder and stashing of his wife are such brutalities that they
become effective subjects of horror. Even with these topics, however, the true terror
in “The Black Cat” is the narrator’s madness and his lack of reason. Wing-Chi Ki
argues, “The hanging of Pluto is a voluntary act of calculated wrongdoing, or moral
suicide in the traditional sense, for the narrator ‘enjoys’ the death of the cat and the
damnation of his soul” (577). The narrator’s irrationality, already hinted at while
under the influence of alcohol and later revealed when he hangs Pluto, is the true
fear being manipulated within this work. Admitting to be under the influence of
madness is the ultimate taboo because it is so widely feared in Poe’s own time.

Given that the narrator reflects his audience, it is expected he would refuse to
admit to madness and instead pass his circumstances off as something out of his
control and possibly supernatural. An imaginary or out-of-this-world foe, in this case,
is much more tolerable than the possibility of madness, for an extraordinary terror
may potentially be explained with reason while madness is defined by its very lack of
anything logical. The mention of alcohol is only in the beginning of the story, fueling
his original harm to Pluto. When he murders the cat and later his wife, he is under
only his own influence. In “The Black Cat,” insanity works to be much more horrifying
than any simply supernatural horror. More than the supernatural or unexplainable,
the illogicality of madness and its ability to override a person’s reason, enabling
them to commit brutal crimes without guilt, is the true fear being exploited within
Poe’s “The Black Cat.”