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The black cat by edgar allan poe critical analysis
The black cat by edgar allan poe critical analysis
Thesis for the american gothic
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Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying and grotesque. “The Black Cat is one of the most powerful of Poe’s stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust” (Quinn).
The story is told through the subjective viewpoint of the narrator who begins by telling the reader he is writing this narrative to unburden his soul because he will die tomorrow. The events that brought him to this place in time have “…terrified, tortured and destroyed him” (Poe). This sets a suspenseful tone for the story. He blames the Fiend Intemperance for the alteration of his personality. He went from a very docile, tenderhearted man who loved his pets and wife to a violent man who inflicted this ill temperament on the very things he loves. The final break from the man that he once was, is the “…spirit of PERVERSENESS” (Poe 514). He describes this as doing something wrong because you know it is wrong. Evil consumes his every thought and he soon develops a hatred for everything. “Speaking through his narrators," Poe illustrates perversit...
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...at the hands of his master. The mutilation of its eye, hanging it to death from a tree and killing his wife, which had shown the cat love. There are two interpretations you can take away from this story, the logic of guilt or supernatural fantasy. Which conclusion will you take?
Works Cited
Grantz, David. Qrisse's Edgar Allan Poe Pages, The Poe Decoder. 20 April 2001. Web site. 17 November 2013.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat." Leonard, George McMichael and James S. Concise Anthology of American Literature. Pearson Education, Inc., 2011. 512-518. Short Story.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. Internet.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. book.
Womack, Martha. Precisely Poe. 1997. web site. 17 November 2013.
New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son., 1884. xv-xxvi. EPUB file. Sova, Dawn B. "Poe, Edgar Allan.
Poe, Edgar Allan, and Arthur Hobson Quinn. Complete Tales and Poems. New ed. : Dorset P., U.S., 1992. Print.
When reading Poe 's stories it’s almost chilling and disturbing to read about a cat’s eye being stab or having the cat hanging from a tree is so sick. Or hitting your wife over the head with an axe is gruesome. It’s like watching an episode of Snapped or a show on the Investigation Discovery channel. But I think that 's what makes Poe such an amazing artist, all his is work is detailed giving us readers a real life experiences of what the characters are feeling. In the Black Cat the narrator says "I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!”(7) This quote is so chilling that it leaves a vibrant image of this in my brain. But what I love the most in Poe 's The Black Cat is the ending when cat sabotages the narrator 's plans of keeping the body concealed behind the wall is so genius. In the Cask of Amontillado I love how cold hearted and manipulative Montresor is when plans revenge on Fortunato and he leads him thinking he going to the Amontillado but ultimately leads him to his death. Montresor 's character is so genius when he tells Fortunato he found a rare wine that he must try, using something that someone likes and using that against them is so smart. I feel Poe is one of the greatest writers in history all his stories leaves your mind guessing and wanting
In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat” the narrator depicts his life as he is in his last days before his death sentence for the crimes he committed. In Poe’s violent story, many relationships are present such as his relationship with his pets, mostly his cat Pluto and his wife. Many critics say that Poe’s short story is an allegory for marriage and domesticity which can be proven through these relationships.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
Thomson, Gary Richard, and Poe Edgar. The selected writings of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Norton & Company, 2004
Kennedy, Gerald J. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001
Edgar Allan Poe Reader. [N.p.]: Courage Books, 1993. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Except, this cat had spot of white on its chest. The cat became very loved at their house by him and his wife, but he eventually grew tired and irritated with the new cat. What made the irritation grow for the cat was that it had one eye missing, just like Pluto. As the narrator and his wife were walking into the cellar, the cat nearly tripped him, which enraged him even more He grabbed the axe to kill it, but his wife stopped him from doing so, he took his arm away from her grasp and then plunged it into her head. “Goaded, by the interference, into rage more than demonical, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain..This hideous murder accomplished.” With no remorse, he then proceeded to hid her body in the newly plastered wall. After he had discarded of her body, he then says that he had never slept better a day in his life. The narrator says, “And thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquility slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder on my
Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the single effect was the most important aspect of a short story, which everything must contribute to this effect. Poe’s gothic tale “The Black Cat” was written trying to achieve an effect of shocking insanity. In this first person narrative the narrator tells of his decline from sanity to madness, all because of an obsession with two (or possibly one) black cats. These ebony creatures finally drive him to take the life his wife, whose death he unsuccessfully tries to conceal.
In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allen Poe scrutinizes the ideas of insanity and guilt. The narrator is unreliable because he acts as if he has mental illnesses and other various problems. He is a man who abuses alcohol and also has a cat that he believes is out to get him, though the animal has never done anything to him. In “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, The narrator is insane and therefore not guilty because he cannot control the choices he makes based on mental illness.
Author Edgar Allan Poe is no stranger to the compelling literary language of horror, and he displays his comfort with the classic elements of the genre in his short story “The Black Cat”. This twisted tale is told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator, describing his blameless hand in the murder of his beloved cat and his wife. The deranged narrator tells his version of the horrific events, while trying to convince the reader that he is a sane man. In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe utilizes the narrator’s appeals to ethos and dramatic imagery to illustrate how the acceptance of a disturbed disposition can consume the sanity of the most docile man, and turn him into a violent monster, demonstrating that all humans are susceptible to the influence of evil.
The murder is discovered as the narrator unknowingly buried the second cat in with the corpse of his wife, the cat cries out when the police happen to be in the same place where the narrator buried his wife. In the “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism, irony, and similes to portray the theme of perverseness and to explain how every man has it and how easily one can become corrupted.
Shulman, Robert. Poe and the Powers of the Mind. Vol. 37. N.p.: The John Hopkins
One of the staples of Poe's writing is the dramatic effect it has on the reader. Poe is known for his masterful use of grotesque, and often morbid, story lines and for his self-destructive characters and their ill-fated intentions. "The Black Cat" is no different from any of his other stories, and thus a Pragmatic/Rhetorial interpretation is obviously very fitting. If Pragmatic/Rhetorical criticism focuses on the effect of a work on its audience, then "The Black Cat" serves as a model for all other horror stories. One of the most intriguing aspects Poe introduces into the story is the black cat itself. The main character initially confesses a partiality toward domestic pets, especially his cat. Most readers can identify with an animal lover, even if they themselves are not. It is not long though before the reader learns of the disease that plagues the main character - alcoholism. Again, the reader can identify with this ailment, but it is hard to imagine that alcoholism could be responsible for the heinous actions made by the main character. In a drunken rage the main character cuts out one of the cat's eyes with a pen knife, and act at which he even shudders. Then, only after the cat's slow recovery from that attack, does the man hang the cat from the limb of a tree. ...