Ministry of higher education

and Scientific research

University of Kirkuk

College of Basic Education

Department of English language

Unraveling the Stylistic Intricacies of Edger Allan

Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’

Submitted by:
Sara Saman Ahmed
Zainab Abdulkhaleq Noori
To
The council of the English Department / College of Education for humanitarian
sciences / Kirkuk University, as fulfillment of the Requirement of B.A in English
Language

Supervised by:
Luwaytha S. Habeeb

2024 AD 1445 H
 Dedication

Special thanks to my parents’ support, who have endlessly supported me in all my

personal projects, including this endeavour that would not have been possible
without them.

To the ones who have always been there for me

My beloved brothers and sisters

lastly, I want to thank all of my teachers and lecturers at my university for their
assistance and directions, without them, I would not have been able to get to this
point.

Thank you all very much, and you will always hold a special place in our hearts.

I
 Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to those people who have an

essential role in achieving my research and without them l couldn't have

done it.

First of all, with an extremely gratitude my supervisor (Luwaytha S.

Habeeb) for his guidance and invaluable support, lam also greatly

indebted to ahead and all staff of English Department at collage of

education for humanitarian sciences. finally, a warmly thanks to the

members of my family especially my father and my mother for their

standing and uncountable love, to my brother and sister.

II
 Abstract
This project is a stylistic analysis of The Black Cat, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s

short stories. The analysis adopts a close reading approach to examine, through the

theory of defamiliarisation and the frameworks of foregrounding and lexical

semantics, how the salience of certain stylistic devices generates a particular

interpretation of the text. The analysis of the text, along with the extensively

presented critical reception of Poe’s style and works, inform an assessment of Poe’s

style.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is an influential writer in the history of

American literature and even in world literature. He is a novelist, a poet and a literary

theorist, who is known as a pioneer of horror fiction, science fiction and detective

fiction. The style of his works is unique and fills with rich connation and it involves

dual personality and non-communication between people.

III
 Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication...................................................................................................................................................... I
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... II
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ III
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................ IV
Section One .................................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Background information on Edger Allan Poe and his significance in American literature .......... 1
1.2 Overview of the Gothic literary tradition and Poe's contributions to the genre ............................. 2
1.3 Brief synopsis of "The Black Cat" and its thematic elements .......................................................... 3
1.4 Statement of purpose: to analyze the narrative voice in "The Black Cat" and its stylistic
implications.................................................................................................................................................. 5
1.5 Objectives of the study .......................................................................................................................... 6
1.6 Questions of the study ........................................................................................................................... 6
Section Two.................................................................................................................................................. 8
Literature Review ....................................................................................................................................... 8
2.1 An Introduction to The Black Cat ....................................................................................................... 8
2.2 Survey of scholarly articles, essays, and critical analyses on Edgar Allan Poe's works, focusing
on studies of narrative voice, Gothic themes, and psychological elements ............................................ 9
2.3 Examination of key concepts and theoretical frameworks relevant to stylistic analysis and
narrative voice in literature ..................................................................................................................... 10
Section Three ............................................................................................................................................. 14
Methodology .............................................................................................................................................. 14
3.1 Explanation of the analytical approach: close reading of the text, identification of key passages,
and analysis of narrative techniques ....................................................................................................... 14
3.2 Analysis of Narrative Voice in "The Black Cat" ............................................................................. 17
Section Four............................................................................................................................................... 20
Findings & Interpretations ...................................................................................................................... 20
Section Five ................................................................................................................................................ 23
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 23
References .................................................................................................................................................. 26

IV
Section One

Introduction
SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

Section One
Introduction
1.1 Background information on Edger Allan Poe and his
significance in American literature
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American poet, short-story writer, editor
and literary critic, has been considered as part of the American Romantic Movement
and the crest in the development of the American gothic traditions. Best known for
his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe is recognized as one of the first American
practitioners of the short story and is considered as the inventor of the detective-
fiction genre. Lowell thinks Poe’s style “is highly finished, graceful, and truly
classical” and he calls Poe “the master of a classic style”. George Bernard Shaw
simply says that Poe’s tales “are masterpieces of style” and he ranked Poe with Mark
Twain as the only two great authors of America in the 19th century. Herbert Marshall
McLuhan calls Poe “the master of a prose whose lucidity and resilience are
unmistakably owing to a society in which good talk is common”. Although he lived
a short and tragic life, Edgar Allan Poe remains today one of the most famous writers
(Lui, 2017) .
More important for Poe’s literary career, one of the judges in the visitor
contest was John P. Kennedy, an established older writer, who became acquainted
with and sympathetic to Poe’s literary aspirations. Kennedy’s influence led to the
impoverished young writer’s obtaining work on a new magazine owned by Thomas
White, in Richmond, Virginia, the Southern Literary Messenger, and to the
publication of some of Poe’s tales in literary annuals and gift books (Fisher, 2008).

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835,
he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he
moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married to Virginia, who was

1
 SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

thirteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of
literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman Magazine and Graham's
Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during
these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor.
He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including "The Fall of the
House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and
"The Raven (Academy of American Poets, 2020).

Although the literature is abundant with the studies analyzing Poe’s works,
most of them approached the topic within a literary perspective. Understanding
Poe’s style profoundly also requires an analysis of the linguistic devices he had
employed in his works. Acknowledging this, various researchers have conducted
stylistic analysis on Poe’s works, yet the number of studies which analyzed Poe in a
detailed stylistic way has remained limited. A closer look at the relevant literature
implies that further research on the linguistic aspects of Poe’s works is warranted.
Considered as a fusion of the terms style and linguistics, stylistics straddles two
interrelated disciplines: linguistics and literary criticism. Both fields, therefore, fuel
stylistics as an area of study to a great extent. Despite the acknowledgement of the
interaction of stylistics with linguistics and literary criticism, stylistics is an area of
study in its own right with its distinguishing characteristics and methodology in
approaching literary works (Simpson, 2004).

1.2 Overview of the Gothic literary tradition and Poe's contributions

to the genre
The word “gothic” in literary criticism is unfortunately a synonym of the
pejorative term- terror. The writing style has even been scorned as a formula, bristled
with violence, murder, revenge, rape, incest, or even with presence of ghost, monster

2
 SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

or some other supernatural phenomena; the prevailing atmosphere of such fictions

is somber, mysterious, horrible and always filled with a sense of suspense. As the
most important heir and reformer of the gothic tradition, Poe not only inherited the
quintessence of gothic novels, he also deepened the connotation of it. In Poe’s works,
he vividly presents the terror of death, evil of human nature, perverseness and
nothingness.
In Poe’s short story The Black Cat, Poe adopts a lot of modifies and long
sentences to show a heavy and complicated style. Horror is considered to be an
aesthetic effect generated by certain linguistic choices. So this paper tries to analyze
how particular linguistic forms can give rise to horror based on lexical features,
syntactical features, rhetorical features and point of view (Badenhausen, 1992).

The Gothic strain existed in excess of, and often within, realist forms, both
inhabiting and excluded from its homogenizing representations of the world.
Psychological rather than supernatural forces became the prime movers in worlds
where individuals could be sure neither of others nor of themselves. As bourgeois
modes of social organization and economic and aesthetic production demanded
increasing realism, self-discipline and regulation of its individuals, with techniques
being developed by social and scientific practices. Scientific theory and
technological innovation, often used as figures of human alienation and Gothic
excess themselves, provided a vocabulary and objects of fear and anxiety for
nineteenth-century Gothic writing. Darwinian models of evolution, researches in
criminology, anatomical and physiological science identified the bestial within the
human (Botting, 1996).

1.3 Brief synopsis of "The Black Cat" and its thematic elements
The literary criticism, although neutral, fused with Griswold’s misconceptions, led
to a reputation that negatively influenced the reception of his creative contributions.

3
 SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

characterised his poetry style as being ‘unhappily cursed with incorrigible bad taste’.
Eliot (1949) claims that the themes of his works are infantile as Poe’s ‘intellect’ is
one ‘of a highly gifted young person before puberty’ (p. 335). James (1878) asserts
that ‘an enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection’
(p. 66). Because of such reputation in his homeland, Poe became one of the first
American authors whose literary contributions were better appreciated in Europe
rather than in his native country, and continues to be respected as his literary views
have impacted literary theories and works, continuing to do so.
Unfortunately, as much as the fabricated lies were a service, as aforementioned, in
creating and keeping Poe alive, they have also been a disservice as they tainted his
reputation and the literary reception (Bot, 2023).

Themes in The Black Cat

Alcoholism: The plot is primarily propelled by the protagonist’s vice, alcoholism
or, as he calls, it “the Fiend Intemperance.” This fiend divides the character’s soul
in two, and so he takes on an increasingly divided nature as the story goes on. There
is his sensible self, aware of and surprised by his own potential for darkness. There
is also his darker self, endlessly thirsty for gin and filled with a desire to inflict
violence.
Sin: Throughout the story, the protagonist struggles with Christian morality. As his
own actions become increasingly perplexing and violent, he grows concerned that
he has strayed from the commandments of the Christian God. Despite his sense of
personal wrongdoing, he is unable to correct himself. As the story comes to its
conclusion, the protagonist makes a plea to God, crying, “But may God shield and
deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend!” But it is too late. The only reply is the
cat’s devilish wail from within the sealed wall.

4
 SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

Guilt: The titular cat, Pluto, serves many symbolic and thematic functions in the
story. One of these functions is as a symbol of the narrator’s guilt. Once the
protagonist has embarked on his path of alcohol-fueled rage, the sight of Pluto fills
him with guilt and self-loathing. (Nørgaard et al., 2010).

1.4 Statement of purpose: to analyze the narrative voice in "The

Black Cat" and its stylistic implications
Stylistics is a discipline mediating between linguistics and literary criticism.
The purpose of stylistic investigation on linguistic form is to reveal its stylistic value.
It refers to thematic significances and aesthetic values generated by linguistic form,
which convey the author’s vision, tone and attitude, embody the mingling or shifting
of points of view, add to the affective or emotive force of the massage, contribute to
characterization and make fictional reality function more effectively in fictional
narrative. According to Leech and Short, “every analysis of style, in our terms, is an
attempt to find the artistic principles underlying a writer’s choice of language”.
The word “gothic” in literary criticism is unfortunately a synonym of the pejorative
term- terror. The writing style has even been scorned as a formula, bristled with
violence, murder, revenge, rape, incest, or even with presence of ghost, monster or
some other supernatural phenomena; the prevailing atmosphere of such fictions is
somber, mysterious, horrible and always filled with a sense of suspense. As the most
important heir and reformer of the gothic tradition, Poe not only inherited the
quintessence of gothic novels, he also deepened the connotation of it. In Poe’s works,
he vividly presents the terror of death, evil of human nature, perverseness and
nothingness.
In Poe’s short story The Black Cat, Poe adopts a lot of modifies and long sentences
to show a heavy and complicated style. Horror is considered to be an aesthetic effect
generated by certain linguistic choices. So this paper tries to analyze how particular

5
 SECTION ONE INTRODUCTION

linguistic forms can give rise to horror based on lexical features, syntactical features,
rhetorical features and point of view (Shaw, 1996).

1.5 Objectives of the study

Through the present research, we aim at:

1. Investigating to what extent the symbol of black cat in Poe’s work

misunderstood by reader.
2. To analyze the stylistics used and themes in Poe’s work.
3. Examination of key concepts and theoretical frameworks relevant to stylistic
analysis and narrative voice in literature.

1.6 Questions of the study

A reader of "The Black Cat" will observe the notice use of symbols in this story.
The author appears to have motives behind the use of this device. Hence, one may
ask the following question:

1. What are reasons behind repetitive theme and style which were used?
2. How does the climax of the story reflect the narrator’s psyche?

6
 Section Two

Literature Review
 SECTION TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

Section Two
Literature Review
2.1 An Introduction to The Black Cat
“The Black Cat”, first published in the magazine The Saturday Evening Post,
in 1843, is a story narrated in first person that tells the story of a man who was very
affectionate to animals, especially to his cat Pluto. At first, he was a good person,
but after he started drinking, he became an angered man. Pluto was the only one that
escaped his “ill temper, but it did not last long; one night when he got home “much
intoxicated” he took out one of the cat’s eye just because the cat bit him. After this,
he felt some remorse, but again it did not last long. One morning he decides “to do
wrong for the wrong sake” and hangs Pluto on a tree. After a while, in another night,
another cat uncannily similar to Pluto appears in his life and is welcomed by the
man’s wife. However, he gets obsessed with the cat, believing that it is Pluto
reincarnated. As time passes by, the man becomes more aggressive, and in one
attempt to take the life of this cat also, his wife interferes and, consumed by a “rage
more than demoniacal” he “buried the axe in her brain”. Then, he decides to hide his
wife’s body in a hole in the wall.

Four days had passed after he murdered his wife, and there was no sign of the cat as
well. When the police arrive in his house to investigate the disappearance of his wife,
they severely search the place, and after looking for her in the house four times, the
police go to the basement where he hid the body. When the police is about to leave,
once they had not found anything, the man starts to brag about how that was “an
excellently well-constructed house”, then, he beats on the wall in which he had
immured her, and suddenly “a cry, at first muffled and broken, . . . one long loud
and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman -a howl- a wailing shriek

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 SECTION TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

came from inside the tomb”. The police hurried to destroy the wall, and found inside
the woman’s corpse and “upon its head . . . sat the hideous beast (Silva, 2017).

2.2 Survey of scholarly articles, essays, and critical analyses on

Edgar Allan Poe's works, focusing on studies of narrative voice,
Gothic themes, and psychological elements
Stylistics is a scientific branch that intermingles literature with language. It is
based on linguistic study of the literary texts. As the major source of data for stylistic
analysis is the language itself in literary texts, it is so natural for stylistics to be in
close connection with the approaches developed in linguistics. Though its roots date
back to rhetoric, it is in the 20th century when stylistics started to manifest itself as
a field of study. In the 20th century, the direct and major influence on stylistics is
attributed to two movements in linguistics: Russian Formalism and Prague School
of structuralism. Within these two schools, the pioneering figures having drastic
impacts on the development of stylistics are Roman Jakobson, Victor Schlovsky and
Vladamir Propp. At the beginning of 19th century, their works shaping Prague
School in particular are worth mentioning. The most significant contribution they
had made is that they foregrounded the idea that language studies should be more
scientific.
With the development of functionalism, formalist scholars shift their movement
from formalism to functionalism. Burke and Evers (2014) specify this noting that
“With the advent of functionalism in the Prague School, there was a gradual move
from text to context, from form to function, from semantics to pragmatics and from
logic to rhetoric” (p.41). This has led to the emergence of functional stylistics which
drew attention in the middle of the twentieth century. Functional stylistics focuses
on the function of a text and contextual factors regarding the literary text. Comparing
to formalist stylistics, functional stylistics stresses contextual factors being relevant
to the content. However, formalist stylistic is more related with the form rather than

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 SECTION TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

content. Their concern is aesthetic position of the literary text. Halliday is among the
pioneering figures in functional stylistics. Several stylistic approaches were affected
by functionalism. One of them was critical stylistics. Nørgaard, Busse and Montaro
(2011) define critical stylistics as a term used to mention stylistic work examining
the ways in which social meanings are manifested via language. Fowler (1986) is
one of the proponents in critical stylistics. In Fowler’s notable work, Linguistic
Criticism, Fowler investigates the relations between context and text, and the role of
reader by the experience.
Having a broader scope, stylistics is not only restricted to the sub-branches of
formalist and functionalist stylistics. Depending on the advances in other fields of
social sciences, the scope and focus of stylistics have expanded leading to the
emergence of other sub-branches including feminist stylistics, critical stylistics,
multimodal stylistics, corpus stylistics, pedagogical stylistics and film stylistics.
Stylisticians have many goals by conducting stylistic analysis. The remarkable aim
is to discover language traits of a literary text (Simpson, 2004). Acquiring language
aspects of a text is vital in presenting clues on the text and its author’s style. Author’s
language choice is determined by the help of stylistic analysis.
“The general goal of most stylistic studies is to show the functional significance of
formal characteristics of texts for the sake of interpretation and to relate literary
effects to linguistic ‘causes’ in relevance to the whole work” (Wales, 1990)

2.3 Examination of key concepts and theoretical frameworks

relevant to stylistic analysis and narrative voice in literature
Lexicology studies the choice of specific lexical items in a text, their
distribution in relation to one another, and their meanings. According to Michael
Toolan, Word-choice (or lexis, or what used to be called ‘diction’) is central to
whatever is distinctive about a particular literary text. We can define a good style,

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SECTION TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

as “the best words in the best order relative to particular purposes at a particular
socio-cultural moment”.
In The Black Cat, this story is told by the first-person narrator about his murdering
his wife and the focus is not on the murdering act but on the psychoanalysis of the
protagonist’s perverse mental state. Poe tries to describe the mental state between
sane and insane. When the murderer committed the crime, he did it cunningly. But
the murdering itself was totally unreasonable and crazy. The wife had done nothing
to entail this fate, which was caused completely by the perverse psychology of the
murderer himself. Perusing this story, this paper finds that Poe makes good use of
the adjectives, verbs, nouns, and lexical deviations like capitalization and italic to
describe the protagonist’s psychology and behavior, which bring readers a feeling
of horror (Toolan, 2008).

Through a close reading of the text based on defamiliarization, foregrounding and

lexical semantics, it is evident that Poe employs lexical deviation and various
collocations to create particular effects. However, what is peculiar is that different
stylistic devices are foregrounded based on the story’s interpretation, whilst some of
the same devices, such as metaphors, foreground a different effect based on the
story’s context. The foregrounding of the devices illustrates that the story could be
read as a portrayal of moral insanity or psychosis, of psychopathy, of nineteen-
century American domesticity, or as a supernatural tale. Therefore, because of the
diverse foregrounding, which is context-dependent, a myriad of potential
interpretations of the story are provided through these devices. However,
paradoxically, these do not advance a definitive understanding of the story but
complicate its interpretation. The conclusion is that the effect that The Black Cat
creates is the fear of the unknown generated using the same literary devices with
multiple effects depending upon the reading and foregrounding context-based

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 SECTION TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

devices, as Poe intentionally does not indulge the reader’s rationality. Instead, he
instils confusion and a fear of irrationality, of the unknown.
Therefore, his style cannot be regarded as flawed as critics have done so, considering
him a ‘tawdry stylist’ (Gargano, 1963) and his style ‘ridden with clichés’ since he
wrote such an intricate story based on his stylistic skills which can only accentuate
his brilliance (Cox, 1968).

12
Section Three

Methodology
 SECTION THREE METHODOLOGY

Section Three

Methodology

3.1 Explanation of the analytical approach: close reading of the text,

identification of key passages, and analysis of narrative techniques
‘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

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 SECTION THREE METHODOLOGY

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 (Milne, 1999).
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

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 SECTION THREE METHODOLOGY

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 (Bliss, 2010).
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”

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 SECTION THREE METHODOLOGY

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 (Lodge, 1994).

3.2 Analysis of Narrative Voice in "The Black Cat"

The person that tells the events in a literary work is called speaker or narrator.
The speaker or narrator includes in point of view of story as an intrinsic element.
Point of view refers to a work’s mode of narration, comprising narrator, language,
audience, and perceptions of events and characters, while opinions and beliefs are
thoughts and ideas that may or may not have anything to do with narration. It will
affect judgments for the readers, because speaker with various background and
intention tells the events. Talking about point of view is similar to telling events or
incidents in real life. The speaker can be the major participant of an action or she/he
only witnesses the action.
Prose uses point of view to deliver the story. The point of view itself is categorized
in three kinds; first-person speaker, second-person speaker, and third-person
speaker. Each of them has its characteristics starting from the pronoun used in the
text. Besides that, the speaker condition and position will influence how she/he
delivers the story, so that hidden agenda will emerge from her/his way telling the
story (Chatman, 1980).

First Person Narrator

This narrator can be called as the most independent of the author. The author may
give the narrator obvious identity or creates it mysteriously. Name, job, and other
predicate can be shown to describe a narrator. On the other hand, an author creates

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him/her without name. The author sometimes does not give clear information about
his/her narrator background.
Information comes from first person narrator are various. It depends on the position
of the narrator himself/herself. There are five kinds of the information. First, first-
hand experience comes from the narrator doing, saying, seeing, hearing, and
thinking by himself/herself. Second, first-hand witness is information that witness
observes others doing and saying. Third, second-hand testimony and hearsay is
information that the narrator gets from others saying to them or communicating to
them. Fourth, inferential information is that the narrator infers or deduces the
information they found. Fifth, conjectural, imaginative, or intuitive information is
guessing what a character or characters might think and act.
First person narrator is tested the reliability. This reliability can be determined from
the narrator’s position and ability, prejudices or self-interest, and judgment of his/her
readers. As readers, we do not always trust to what the narrator tells. Sometimes, we
found him/her lack of credibility from his/her information. So, a narrator can be
either reliable or unreliable considering some factors mentioned before (Kennedy,
2002).
The Position of The Black Cat’s Narrator
A narrator has important role in any stories to influence the readers’ opinions.
Narrator or speaker is a part of point of view that creates arguments and judgments.
The position and interest of the narrator influence him/her conveying the story. It
also happens to a short story entitled The Black Cat which the story is conveyed by
a first person narrator. To make the discussion of the position of the narrator clear,
it is important to know the story briefly (Lin, 2009).

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 Section Four

Findings & Interpretations

 SECTION FOUR FINDINGS & INTERPRETATIONS

Section Four
Findings & Interpretations
Key findings from the analysis of narrative voice in "The Black Cat": The
Black Cat was published in Revival Post magazine by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843.
Being salient with gothic elements, The Black Cat is an acclaimed short story in the
literature. This short story is significant in its properties signifying the characteristics
of Poe’s style. The story is grounded on the unordinary and brutal events of a
narrator. The narrator tranquilly lives with his wife in their house with pets including
dogs, birds and a cat. The cat is a sagacious and faithful animal among the other
animals. He always pursues and sits near him. The narrator and his wife spend most
of their time feeding and taking care of pets at the home. However, this situation
reverses after he takes alcohol which leads him to commit evil faults.

The Black Cat is a short story which is notable for employing horror and violence
figures. It could be seen in the frequency of the use of nouns, adjectives and verbs
relating with violence and murder actions. Narrator is unnamed and tells the story
directly from the first point of view. The reader learns the events through narrator’s
mind. This situation creates suspense because the state of other character’s minds is
not represented. The short story centers on several themes such as the impact of
alcoholism, obsession, abuse of cats and the punishment of evil deeds. In this story,
details of setting are not given. The author chooses an unnamed narrator with the
purpose of implying that anyone could be in the position of the narrator. He thinks
this narrator could be everyone. The dominant trait in the short story is perverseness
which is the main drive for the evil actions in the story. Most probably, the black cat
is a mark of his patience. Narrator does not tolerate its action, and atrocity begins
with this intolerance.

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 SECTION FOUR FINDINGS & INTERPRETATIONS

It deduces from the findings that the author has lived in romantic atmosphere in his
own world.

First, in writing a short story entitled The Black Cat Edgar Allan Poe applied the first
person narrator that information comes from first-hand experience. It means the
narrator is the major mover, the subject, and the main character that what he says,
sees, does, hears, and thinks he informs to the readers. Then, his position telling this
story is in a jail cell. He does not tell, but he writes a letter in his last day of his life.
Besides the physical position of the narrator, some factors included position such as
social, mental and economic circumstances affect the opinion and judgment of the
narrator. He is not in a good position with unhealthy mental condition as alcoholic
and in poverty. This story is affected by superstition of black cat. People believe that
this animal is regarded as a witch that may cause bad luck.
Second, the events as parts of story consist of eighteen events from thirty five
paragraphs. Those events involve the narrator as a husband, the wife, and the black
cat. There are some main events of the story which may influence plot. They are
disagreement of superstition of black cat between the narrator and his wife, the
narrator loves black cat, he changes his temperament, he tortures his wife and pets,
and he kills his wife.
Third, the narrator of The Black Cat has his own agenda writing his experiences in
a letter. He has an aim to get sympathy from the readers of his letter. He does not
want to be blamed for his wife’s death, although he kills her by his own hand.
Besides that, he is likely to distort the readers’ judgment and opinion on the black
cat superstition.

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Section Five

Conclusion
 SECTION FIVE CONCLUSION

Section Five
Conclusion
Edgar Allan Poe, who was an American short story writer, poet, critic and
editor, he was obsessed on gothic literature, gothic literature is characterized by its
darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre. We can see the form
of history deployed, appearing like ghosts in the present, were less feudal and
romantic and more an effect of scientific discourse. Gothic literature developed
during the romantic period in Britain, and its atmosphere was full of gloom, terror
and mystery.
The researchers draw conclusion from the finding and analysis about point of view
in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat. There are three points discussed in this
research. They are the position of the narrator, the events in the story, and the
agenda of the narrator.
His short stories are everlastingly charming and enduring owes much to his special
gothic style. Gothicism is strongly characterized by its distinctive feature of “dark”
both in plot and theme: in plot-knitting, it romances densely on ferocity and
devilishness; thematically, it aims at profoundly probing into the human nature of
wickedness, especially on ethics through the unveiling of the gloomy side and malice
in society, politics, religion, morality as well as humanity. Poe here employs a
variety of stylistic devices in creating his story The Black Cat. By analyzing the
lexical features and the syntactical features in The Black Cat.
The conclusion is that the effect that The Black Cat creates is the fear of the unknown
generated using the same literary devices with multiple effects depending upon the
reading and foregrounding context-based devices, as Poe intentionally does not
indulge the reader’s rationality. Instead, he instils confusion and a fear of
irrationality, of the unknown.

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 SECTION FIVE CONCLUSION

Therefore, his style cannot be regarded as flawed as critics have done so, considering
him a ‘tawdry stylist’ and his style ‘ridden with clichés’ since he wrote such an
intricate story based on his stylistic skills which can only accentuate his brilliance, a
background of Poe’s reputation as an author and scholarly debates on Poe as an
author and his style.
Suggestions:
Based on the result of this research, this study provides some suggestions for the
reader who interest for taking the similar research about the psychological. On this
research is only focus to the main character on the Black Cat short story and doing
analyze on the psychological that focused on the psychoanalysis.
On a higher plane, we hope that our paper triggers an intensified debate about the
link between theoretical and empirical models of convergence thereby contributing
to more conclusive findings in the literature. We are confident that more explicit
theories and the right analytical tools will allow for a more balanced account of the
importance of policy convergence and diffusion.
Though it is possible to comment about style of Poe, analyses including other
stories by Poe would lead stronger claims about his style. Thus, further research
needs to be conducted with a larger number of short stories to be able to acquire
more information about Poe and his style.

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