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Symbolism in the black cat by edgar allan poe
Symbolism in the black cat by edgar allan poe
Symbolism in the black cat by edgar allan poe
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The Black Cat is a short story describing the events that take place after a normal man experiences the struggles of alcoholism which seemingly cause him to go insane and perform many unethical actions. The short story begins with the narrator who is situated in prison and he is discussing the unfortunate event he must partake in the following day. He continues his narrative by describing his downfall into a state of anguish fueled by alcohol and hate which drives him insane eventually causing him to murder his wife and pet. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” the titular cat is a symbol of the characters struggle with alcohol and his poor actions and hatred throughout the short story.
The overall tone and mood of the The Black Cat is dark
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The narrator has begun to go slightly insane and he does not care for people’s comments and opinion when he is in public or when he abuses his wife and pets. The narrator has started to see life in a different way now that he has become an alcoholic.
Wing-Chi Ki stated in an article, “In Poe's story, the narrator is a slave of the bottle, but wine also leads the narrator to master himself, to do evil in a disinterested manner, and to equate evil with the highest duty. The narrator's behavior implies the triumph of diabolical evil that advocates neither selfish calculation nor a clear ideological identification.”
In “The Black Cat,” the narrators drive to become an alcoholic and to mistreat his wife and animals coincides with the belief of diabolical evil. The narrator basically adopts this idea that evil should be the source of his incentives, therefore he begins to accept that he is not his normal self anymore and his drive consumes him constantly. He is driven to do these awful deeds and he does not feel bad about maltreating the animals and to justify this he simply says, “I knew myself no longer.” The narrator uses his struggle with alcohol and his hatred towards his wife and pets as a justification for his actions which characterizes him as an evil person. Alcohol plays a primary role in the collapse of the narrator's relationships with all of the people in his
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Throughout “The Black Cat,” the narrator’s personal relationships begin to disintegrate and his conflict concerning alcohol worsens. The actual black cat serves as a justification for the unfortunate events that take place in the short story. The narrator’s choice of negative words give off a dark tone for the short story by using dark imagery to frame the story. The narrator has become extremely abusive and hateful towards his family and pets and he is eventually driven insane most likely because he is an alcoholic. The narrators relationships with the people he is closest to quickly changes as he begins to struggle with alcohol more often and this is because he begins to dislike them and becomes hateful. Since the narrator is intoxicated more often than not the real question is whether or not there actually is a second black cat or just an imagined character
Poe carefully details the most brutal scenes of his stories, a quality shared by many of his works. Within “The Black Cat,” three situations stand to illustrate Poe’s message: when the narrator stabs out Pluto’s eye, when the narrator hangs Pluto, and when the narrator murders his wife. Before the first violent act described in the story, the narrator is known to be a drunkard who abused his wife. No matter how despicable this may be, he is still a somewhat ordinary man. Nothing majorly sets him apart from any another, relating him to the common man. However, his affinity towards alcohol, led to “the fury of a demon” (2) that came over him as he “grasped the poor beast by the throat” (2) and proceeded to “cut one of its eyes from the socket.” (2) Poe’s gruesome description of the narrator as a destructive demon, one who was awakened by alcohol, connects his behavior to the common working-class man. Alcohol is a legal drug that can be obtained by many, and when consumed in excess leads to the uncontrollable madness that ensued. The descriptions of the act plants fear into the hearts of the readers, especially those who have consumed alcohol, of ever becoming such a
Madness is mostly represented by both writers through a thing or object. In The Black Cat, eventually the cats become the madness as the protagonists mental state deteriorates. The second cat the protagonist found is the object that is used to represent his guilt for his brutal actions towar...
Substance abuse affects the entire body, in The Black Cat it affects the narrators personality and his mood but alcohol can also have physical affects on the body. From the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, they state that alcohol can interfere with your brains communication pathways, and can also affects the way your brain works and looks in the long run. They state also along with what happens to the brain that it can disrupt mood and behavior, make it harder to think clear and move with coordinating skills. We can see how this applies to our narrator, he becomes angry and moody. He is thoughtless and doesn't care about his actions changing him from a caring, delightful human being to someone who could murder and sleep soundly through the night.
Another extraordinary tale by Edgar Allen Poe is, “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” recounts the story of an unnamed narrator with a selfless character. Loving animals, he and his wife have several pets, one of which being a black cat. The narrator and the cat grow very close and life for the narrator seems complete, until he beings drinking. Intoxicated by alcohol, the narrator becomes irritable and abusive. One day, that narrator, infur...
Poe uses the narrator’s perverse desires to harm the cat to emphasize his masculine declination. The narrator blames the cat for his actions rather than taking responsibility for his own perverse desires. The narrator states that “the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman” (2501). The narrator is unable to place the blame on himself because he does not possess masculine qualities, which would allow him to take responsibility for his actions. The cat is used to symbolize feminine desires as a black cat is commonly associated with witches, sorcery, and evil. Women were commonly associated with witches and black cats in the eighteenth century. The narrator feels inferior to his wife, which contributes to his increasing feminine qualities. Thus, the cat adds to the narrator’s perverse desires which propels him to lose masculine
The short story the “Black Cat” begins with the narrator of the story telling his side of events that have occurred throughout his life. When first being introduced to the narrator you can tell something is off with him. The narrator is originally a well-put together man he has a wife and many of different animals but has a much greater love for one of his animals named Pluto a black cat. As the life of the narrator goes on he falls into a drinking problem he cant stop drinking and when he does drink he gets violent. One night when
In “The Black Cat”, the main character is consumed so much by his madness, which grows more and more as the story goes on and eventually ends with him being put in jail for murder of his wife. The madness first starts when his love for his black cat, Pluto,turns to utter hatred. He stabs out the
Furthermore, Poe’s plot development added much of the effect of shocking insanity to “The Black Cat.” To dream up such an intricate plot of perverseness, alcoholism, murders, fire, revival, and punishment is quite amazing. This story has almost any plot element you can imagine a horror story containing. Who could have guessed, at the beginning of the story, that narrator had killed his wife? The course of events in “The Black Cat’s” plot is shockingly insane by itself! Moreover, the words in “The Black Cat” were precisely chosen to contribute to Poe’s effect of shocking insanity. As the narrator pens these he creates a splendidly morbid picture of the plot. Perfectly selected, sometimes rare, and often dark, his words create just the atmosphere that he desired in the story.
for dark, mysterious, and bizarre works of fiction. His works sometimes reflected his life experiences and hardships he tried to overcome. Examples of the troubles in his life include alcoholism, having his works rejected over and over, being broke, and losing his family, even his beloved wife to tuberculosis. There is no wonder why his works are so dark and evil, they were taken from his life. A theme is defined as the major or central idea of a work. Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat”, contains six major themes that are discussed in this paper. They include the home, violence, drugs and alcohol, freedom and confinement, justice and judgement, and transformation.
Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.
firstly, we can say that he had a good childhood. he loved his pets. but slowly as he grew old, may be because of some unfortunate events of failures, he started getting a feeling of emptiness in him and so he turned towards alcohol to fill this emptiness or to forget about all the bad things. the narrator also calls it a devil's act(feind intemperance). it was this alcohol that made him abuse his pets and slowly his wife.but when his own cat, who use to once love him, ignored him and scratched him in self defence he lost his mind. "The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. 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 fibre of my frame". by saying this he is discribing how he wasnt thinking properly. he had lost his rational thinking.he's lost himself(soul take its flight from his body)and no longer is in control of himself. and the alcohol that was running through him body was taking control of his body. this imagery explains perfectly what was going throught his mind at that moment. the readers can actually feel the insanity going on his mind. this is not something that a third person would have been able to discribe or experience and thus even the readers wouldnt have been able to understand his insane state of mind. so the 1st person narration plays an important role in explaning this plot of the story.
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...
In "The Black Cat," the author, Edgar Allan Poe, uses a first person narrator who is portrayed as a maniac. Instead of having a loving life with his wife and pets, the narrator has a cynical attitude towards them due to his mental instability as well as the consumption of alcohol. The narrator is an alcoholic who takes out his own insecurities on his family. It can be very unfortunate and in some cases even disastrous to be mentally unstable. Things may take a turn for the worst when alcohol is involved, not only in the narrator's case, but in many other cases as well. Alcohol has numerous affects on people, some people may have positive affects while others, like the narrator in "The Black Cat," may have negative affects like causing physical and mental abuse to those he loved. The combination of the narrator's mental instability along with the consumption of alcohol caused the narrator to lose control of his mind as well as his actions leading him to the brink of insanity. Though the narrator is describing his story in hopes that the reader feels sympathy towards him, he tries to draw the attention to his abuse of alcohol to demonstrate the negative affects that it can take on your life as well as destroy it in the end.
In The Black Cat, Poe creates a tale of strange confusion and morbid mystery. The tone is serious, as the narrator is writing his account of the events the day before he is going die, presumably for his crimes. The narrator, and the villain of the story, begins by saying he is "noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition." This statement is ironic, because as the story continues, we see he is anything but docile and humane. He becomes a driven man, passionate about getting rid of the cat that haunts him.
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. ...