How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Connotative Language In The Black Cat

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A pattern in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is the reliability and sanity of the narrator being deteriorated through the use of connotative language. Poe’s narrator is first-person, he communicated the sequence of events from his perspective to the reader. For a narrator to be unreliable, their personal bias must corrupt the accuracy of information being relayed. Connotative language encompasses the unspoken emotional implications and underlying contexts of a descriptive word. This connotative language pattern is used in reference to the cat on multiple occasions; the first time the narrator attacks his cat, upon realizing his second cat is beginning to resemble the first, and after he murders his wife. The pattern of increasing negative …show more content…

. . for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place” (20). Upon finding a new cat, he instantly adopts it, however, the same hatred he had accumulated for the original quickly resurfaced. And now I was indeed wretched beyond wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast – whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed – a brute beast to work out for me – for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God – so much of insufferable woe! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest anymore! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find that hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight – an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off – incumbent eternally upon my heart! …show more content…

The cat has afflicted so much insanity that the narrator felt tormented by its presence, only through murder did he feel at peace: “My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little.” This irrational act marks the peak of the narrator’s insanity. Initially, he only saw the animal as something to be pitied, as time passed he viewed it as a creature of cruel intentions. Eventually, he eradicated all animal characteristics, turning his cat from a pitiable animal to a “thing”. The narrator’s overwhelming insanity becomes glaringly clear at this point; his insanity has reached its highest point, overrunning him with such madness that he killed his wife without hesitation or regret. His information has become completely unreliable, causing the reader to question what is true or not, and directing many inferences drawn from the text towards the narrator’s

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