Because of this bite, “the fury of a demon instantly possessed” the man, and he “knew [himself] no longer” (347). Since the black cat, associated with evil, bit the narrator, he now has evil inside of him. After this attack, the narrator first shows signs of mental illness. His saying he ‘knew himself no longer’ and that his soul has “take[n] its flight from [his] body” implies that he is not in control of his body and an outside power, the supernatural, is (347). After the attack, the narrator took out his pocketknife and stabbed the cat in the eye, an irrational decision showing the increasing severity of his illness.
This of course has consequences, and it leaves the family who received the paw heart broken. The black cat is about a man who through various courses of action ends up killing a black cat that he cherished. The cat then comes back to haunt and distress him. Both stories are Gothic horror stories that build up suspense and tensions in different ways. The setting that is established in 'The Monkey's Paw,' is typical of the genre.
As Benjamin Fisher states in his literary analysis, “…black cats are unpredictable, but usually evil creatures…” (Fisher, 86). Pluto, as well as the second cat begins to torture the narrator. Slowly, the situation unfolds into a more heinous fate for the cat as well as the narrator. The narcissism of the narrator contributes to the overall darkness of the story and is largely conclusive to the dark and the underlying malevolence of Poe’s own conscience. The cat in “The... ... middle of paper ... ...luto represents the underworld, self-indulgence, and insanity.
Black cats are considered bad luck, as well in other folklores like the Cat Sith. It is a fairy from the Scottish Folklore who have the ability to steal a dead person’s soul before the gods could claim it. That belief led to the creation of night-and-day watches called the “Late Wake” to guard bodies just before burial. Also from the Norse legend of Freya, the goddess of love and fertility, whose chariot was pulled by two black
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.
Continuously in “The Black Cat,” The narrator was unaware of these last symbols related to the black cat; since he takes as a joke his wife “allusion to ancient popular notion… that all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 1593). To add up, the name of the cat infers darkness; Pluto is, the powerful roman god of the underworld and death, foreshadowing that the dark is close, and the narrator most likely will conclude in an unpleasant place known as hell. Furthermore in the short story “The Black Cat,” night is not just flames of darkness devouring the soul; indeed through the story, the narrator gets out of the house at “night” due to the fact that the face and sins become blurry during night time (Poe 1595). During nighttime, the narrator’s demoniac personality is almost invisible and erase from the perception of the human eye, but it is not exterminated from the existence of the book known as history. However, evil inside the narrator “grew, day by day” because of the darkness built inside his soul made him perverse (Poe 1593).
When the tale reads, “Night’s Plutonian shore” Poe is referencing the gates to hell. Pluto’s shore is the beginning to an ocean of hell, which suggests that the bird is now some sort of demonic creature tasked to haunt the narrator. The narrator is in so much emotional pain he feels that the raven must “take thy beak from out my heart”. Likewise, the narrator of “The Black Cat” has similar feelings to his own animal. Following the adoption of a second cat, the narrator remarks, “For my own part, I soon found a dislike to [the new black cat] arising within me...I know not how or why it was--its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed”.
It took him a moment to realize that its mirrored door was swinging open as the train rocked, and the monster he saw was himself—reflected. Uncanniness is the experience of conceptual interpretation breaking down. Spookiness is frightening unpredictability and alienness—mixed with familiarity. Nothing can be more familiar than ourselves; and yet there are times when we find ourselves alien, chaotic, and confusing. Monsters are driven mainly by emotion, not reason.
	The most important symbol of the story is the first black cat. The first black cat is symbolic of the narrator’s evil heart and there are many ways one can prove this. Black cat one started out in the story as the narrator’s favorite pet and playmate named Pluto,which is the name of the God of the Underworld. And one night, after returning home much intoxicated the narrator’s love for the pet seem to fade away. That night in which the narrator is...
The very description of the signalman's box creates a feeling of suffocation and being trapped. 'On either side, a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all but a strip of sky; the perspective one way was only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon;' The emphasis on the gloominess and 'forbidding' 'deadly' environment conveys the relevance to the storyline of pre-cursor of death and constant haunting and reminder of danger. Dickens also seems to always entertain the possibility of a supernatural presence. For example, the narrator had felt the dread of a following train, and when the wind 'struck a chill' to him. This allows for an interpretation of the apparent interference of a ghost in the plot like an outer world inspiration.