IN BETWEEN ILLUSION AND REALITY:

AN ANALYSIS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE’S

THE BLACK CAT

Yağmur Damla Kutlar

 I. INTRODUCTON

i) ABSTRACT

The following discussion’s aim is to shed light on how Edgar Allan Poe demonstrated
an ebb and flow action between illusion and reality by the help of the implementations of two
items which are the superstitions that dealt with the adverse belief on black cats and moral
insanity conditions that are particularly specified as the spirit of perverseness. Poe pens a
pleasant and merry narrator who, truly soon as the story goes, turns into a short-tempered,
ireful one. When the story is superficially overlooked, this sharp shift may be comprehended
ordinarily as a rough, unfortunate psychological stage that the narrator is going through.
However, Poe straight-out points to some elements that indicate the explicitly in sight
psychological changes indeed acquire by existing of the narrator’s mental disorder issues that
are, his spirit of perverseness and hidden belief on superstitions.

ii) SUMMARY

The story begins with the narrator’s attempt of making the reader believe in him on he
is not mad, yet he also states that he does not solicit any belief on what he is about to pen. He
is due to be put to death the next day and his only purpose of telling is to present the
household events that terrified and tortured him. He sets in describing by how much of a meek
child he was, morally and psychologically stable in an affirmative way, how merciful he was,
and how he kept this positive psychological condition throughout his life, even until he
marries. He and his wife, who is a superstitious woman, have various animals, including a
beautiful, gnostic, black cat which his wife off and on mentions how black cats are actually
witches in disguise, but the narrator never really minds that statement.

However, even though he is embarrassed confessing this reality, he gets irritable and
moody day by day, as he suggests, due to abusive use of alcohol which leads him to harass
both his wife and his pets -with an exception of Pluto the cat. Despite this, one day when he
arrives home drunk, assuming the cat is avoiding him, he grasps the cat causing it to bite him
in fear. Thereupon narrator loses his temper and gouges the cat’s one eye. While the cat
recovers, until it does not look like suffering in pain any more, it keeps away in dismay from
the narrator who is in grief at first yet, this grief soon leaves its place to bad temper. Along
with this bad temper and the urge of perverseness, which he defines as primitive impulse, he
hangs the cat on a tree, in tears but at the same time in awareness of he is committing a sin.

That night, the night the narrator kills the animal which once loved him so much, his
house sets on fire and he, his wife and his servant escapes. Interestingly, out of all the wreck,
there stands a single wall with an image of a hanged cat. Even though the narrator feels an
extreme terror, he then comes up with the reasonable explanation that to wake him up by the
fire bursts, someone must have cut the rope around the cat’s neck and throw it the room where
he sleeps though the window. With the ammonia, the lime and the heat combining, the cat
must have been compressed into the plaster, he thinks. Despite the reasoning, he quickly falls
into remorse, regretting the loss of the animal and looks for another animal to replace its
place.

Again, he starts drinking alcohol and one day while he is out to drink, he finds a cat
which is very similar to Pluto, except a large white furry part on its chest. Seeing the animal is
acting close to the narrator, he asks the landlord who does not know about the cat, if he can
take it with him. His wife also gets genuinely interested with the animal. However, once
more, the narrator’s personality begins to change. Reverse of what he anticipated, he feels the
urge of disgust and annoyance that then leads to bitterness and hatred, towards the cat which
is really affectionate to him. This hatred increases when he finds out the next morning, it is
missing an eye, just like Pluto. Even considering this growing hatred, the “beast” -as he calls
the cat now- never leaves him alone. In return for this disgust, as his wife regularly indicates
the obvious difference between the two cats which is the white patch, the narrator begins to
see a resemblance of a gallows. He defines the dread he is in by saying how he has no good
left within and how evil, dark thoughts become his only intimates.

One day, in all this malignant psychological state of his, the cat encumbers and trips
him. Savagely, he uplifts an axe to land it on the animal, yet by the interdiction of his wife, he
lands it instead of her head in a fury. Then he starts to think about the possible ways he can
cover up the dead body. After a couple of varied approaches, he finally decides on hiding the
body by walling it up in the cellar, with no evidence left behind the murder. He, then, looks
up for the animal to destroy it also, however he cannot see any trace of it. At last, he has a
peaceful rest that night.

Three days pass and the cat is no longer around. The fourth day, a party of policemen
show up to investigate. The narrator acts so smoothly that he does not even shiver. Just before
the party leave, in a desire to say something, he begins to talk about how the walls of the
house are so well made, tapping the part of the wall at the cellar which contains his wife
behind.

With the tapping, behind the wall, there comes a cry, first muffled and broken, then
turning into an inhuman howl. Hearing the anomalous scream, initially the motionless
policemen runs towards the wall to remove the bricks. The scene that they are left with is
gruesome. There is the corpse clotted with gore, the red mouthed cat upon her head with eyes
of fire. He then realizes, by the dread he was in, he must have walled the animal, which he
believes its craft seduced him to kill his wife, with the dead body.

iii) THEORY

As stated above, two main items dominate the overall story, spirit of perverseness and
superstitions. The spirit of perverseness is “one of the primitive impulses of the human heart,
to do wrong or the wrong’s sake only” (Poe, pars. 9). That is to say, it represents the
unhindered desires, wrong desires, coming to light, and one’s empowering action towards
those cravings. It is a moral insanity condition as the physicians Thomas Arnold and
Benjamin Rush refers to. Despite giving a reasonable item to analyze the narrator’s situation,
on the other hand, there is the superstition factor. It is the belief in supernatural causality
where events cause others with no natural process building a link between the two events
(Vyse, 19-22). In the story the adverse belief on black cats is the focused idea. Here, in this
analysis, the use of rational psychological issues which are named as moral insanity and along
with that, irrational superstitions will be reviewed.

II. ANALYSIS

“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.

III. CONCLUSION

Edgar Allan Poe uses his uncertainty elements, as in most of his stories, in his story
“The Black Cat”. The uncertainness factor successfully brings readers ‘attention to the story.
Along with the gothic style of his, also the way he leaves room for the readers to complete the
story or come up with a reason throughout the text, should be considered as a fascinating
fashion that achieves this attention.

IV. REFERENCES

Vyse, Stuart A. Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England:

Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Black Cat." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov.
2008. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.

LitCharts Editors. "LitChart on Poe's Stories." LitCharts.com. 8 Jan 2016.

Womack, Martha. “Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”.” Poedecoder. n.d.