The Importance of Point of View in The Black Cat
Point of view is a very important aspect of The Black Cat. The main character tells the story to the reader from his first person point of view. You have a good feel for the story because you have the first person narration. As you read into the story it comes apparent however that the narrator telling the story is not a reliable interpretation of the details around him. You have a good feel for his emotions and the events of the story, but the narrators opinions are so far out that you are forced to wonder just what of the story is the askew interpretation of a madman and what is the reality of the situation. The first person narration of the story plays an integral part in the reader's level of understanding of the main character's madness, as well as the unfolding of plot of the story.
The story revolves around a man and his cat that loves him very devoutly. At the start of the story he is very fond of his loving companion the cat, Pluto. The cat's love for his master eventually becomes Pluto's demise. The cat would follow its master's every move. If the narrator moved the cat was at his feet, if he sat Pluto would clamor to his lap. This after a while began to enrage the narrator. He soon found himself becoming very irritable towards Pluto and his other pets. One night he came home "much intoxicated" and he grabbed Pluto. Pluto bit his hand and this sent him into a rage. "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"(Poe 103). At this point he seems to have lost it. This description is not that of someone of sane mindset. His soul taking flight from his body appears to be symbolic for the loss of his rational thought. The fury of a demon gives you the imagery of something not human. Poe takes every opportunity to use the narrator, and the point of view, to give you insight into the mind of the madman. He uses eloquent imagery and symbolism to further your understanding of the main character's rational.
In “An Edgar Allan Poe Reader” several stories and poems are revealed but only a few will be considered. In the stories “The Black Cat” Poe writes irony in the story. This certain story is a first person narrative. The narrator shifts from a happy, animal loving, married man. One night the narrator gets drunk and believes that Pluto is not listening to him. So he takes the cat eyes out and hangs the cat. After the cat hanging he decides to kill the cat with an axe. But his wife would not allow it so he buried the axe in the brain. Poe says, “I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain”, (245).
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. Many consider him to be the master of mystery and horror. He only lived until he was forty, and during that time he endured a lot of hardships. For one, every woman he ever cared for ended up dead, usually by the dreaded tuberculosis. That included his wife Virginia. The men in his life who were supposed to be there to guide him, well, they were not there. I think that helped him write a lot of his dark and macabre stories. His most famous work is The Raven, a narrative poem that was first published in January 1845. He also wrote other highly regarded short stories such as, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell- Tale Heart, and The Black Cat. I will be doing my review on the latter of the three.
Poe is a very complicated author. His literary works are perplexed, disturbing, and even grotesque. His frequent illnesses may have provoked his engrossment in such things. In 1842 Dr. John W. Francis diagnosed Poe with sympathetic heart trouble as well as brain congestion. He also noted Poe's inability to withstand stimulants such as drugs and alcohol (Phillips 1508). These factors may have motivated him to write The Tell-Tale-Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Black Cat. All of these stories are written in or around 1843, shortly after Poe became afflicted. His writing helped him to cope with his troubles and explore new territory in literature. Poe's interest in the supernatural, retribution, and perverse cause them to be included in his burial motifs; therefore sustaining his interest. There is a common thread laced through each subject, but there is variation in degrees of the impact. The supernatural is the phenomena of the unexplained. With this comes an aura of mystery and arousal of fear. Death in itself is the supreme mystery. No living human being can be certain of what happens to the soul when one dies. It is because of this uncertainty that death is feared by many. These types of perplexing questions cause a reader to come to a point of indifference within one of Poe's burial motifs. One is uncertain of how the events can unfold, because a greater force dictates them. Reincarnation in The Black Cat is a supernatural force at work. There is some sort of orthodox witchcraft-taking place. The whole story revolves around the cat, Pluto, coming back to avenge its death. One can not be sure how Pluto's rebirth takes place, but it is certain that something of a greater force has taken hold. The cat's appearance is altered when the narrator comes across it the second time. There is a white spot on the chest "by slow degrees, degrees nearly imperceptible…it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinct outline…of the GALLOWS" (Poe 4). Foretelling the narrator's fate a confinement tool appears on the cat's chest. This also foreshadows the cat's confinement in the tomb. It reappears like a disease to take vengeance on a man that has committed horrid crimes. "I was answered by a voice within the tomb! --By a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and quickly swelling into one long, loud and continuous scream, utterly anomalous an...
The United States Government was founded on the basis that it would protect the rights and liberties of every American citizen. The Equal Protection Clause, a part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, provides that “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Yet for hundreds of years, the US government and society have distressed the Native American people through broken treaties, removal policies, and attempts of assimilation. From the Trail of Tears in the 1830s to the Termination Policy in 1953, the continued oppression of American Indian communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension and gave the native peoples a reason to fight back. In 1968, Clyde Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, and Russell Means founded the American Indian Movement to address issues concerning the Native American community and tackle the situation and position of Native Americans in society. Over the next few decades, the movement led to a series of radical protests, which were designed to raise awareness to the American Indians’ issues and to pressure the federal government to act on their behalf. After all of the unfair and unjust policies enacted by the U.S. government and society, all of the American Indian Movement’s actions can be justified as legitimate reactions to the United States’ democratic society that had promised to respect and protect their people and had failed to do so.
There have been many discussions over the course of this principles of literature class that talk about theme, structure, and the plot of the story. Fiction has been one of the main genres that have been analyzed in this course too. Likewise, in Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Black Cat”, the plot, structure, and the different themes can provide for a unique discussion in class, which is why it should be included in this course.
From the beginning of the 20th Century, there were nearly 250,000 Native Americans in the United States who accounted for approximately 0.3 percent of the population. This population was mostly residing in reservations where they executed a restricted extent of self-government. Native Americans have experienced numerous challenges related to land use and inconsistent public policies. Actually, during the 19th Century, Native Americans were dispossessed of a huge section of their land through forced removal westwards, through a series of treaties that were largely dishonored, and through military defeat by the United States in its expansion of control over the American West (Boxer par,1). Moreover, Native Americans have experienced
Throughout America’s history, Native Americans have faced overt persecution and suppression from Eastern settlers. Yet, the zealous and resilient sprit of the Native Americans has helped to preserve their heritage from the adverse attacks of American settlers. The emetic tactics utilized by Americans in Elizabeth Finn’s article prove that early settlers in America did not view Indians as human beings, rather sources who’s existence prevents them obtaining land, power, and wealth. The vast majority of American settlers refused to examine their upheaval of the Indian culture. During the 1700s and 1800s, Americans employed an array of tactics to dehumanize and suppress the Native Americans, which ranged from pernicious to explicitly racist and
As the subjugation of the American Indian population began, the driving need to collect information emerged as did the quandaries that people who study this field struggle with today. To understand why problems transpire in this field of study, it is imperative that scholars know why should this field be studied. This reason is as simple or as complex as anyone wishes to make it. The program is to “present information and interpretations that otherwise would be overlooked.” The challenge that emerges from this rather simplistic meaning spans time and the globe in its debates and encompasses scholars of Native American and non- Indian ancestry. The purpose of this paper is not to tell about the history of why Native American Studies ought to be taught but to describe problems and solutions that it faces in its execution in the discipline both in the academic and in fieldwork.
Native Americans experienced extreme lifestyle changes between 1860 and 1900 due to the Indian Wars, the US government’s not knowing what to do with the uprooted population, and the ‘white man’s burden’. Due to manifest destiny, the removal and containment of Native Americans was an easy decision for the US Government to make, but a nearly detrimental one for all of the tribes involved.
Since the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 the Native American has systematically been dehumanized, decivilized and redefined into terms that typify a subordinate or minority role, restricted life opportunities persist today as a result.
In this paper, I plan to examine the marked transformation and the history of the so-called “Indian Problem.” The idea of an “Indian Problem” began with the arrival of white settlers in North America, and for them, it was a problem of safety, security, and land acquisition. Around 1890, the “Indian Problem” became an issue of how to help the Indians go extinct humanely, or to assimilate into white culture. The current conception of the “Indian Problem” started after World War II, and the pursuing civil rights movement. People saw that the Indians weren’t going extinct and that they were keeping their cultures alive, and the “Indian Problem” shifted to undoing the damage that the policies of the federal government had caused. I will be discussing the fact that the profound problems which characterize the “Indian Problem” now are a direct result of the actions taken in response to previous conceptions of the “Indian Problem.”
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.
Brier-Mackie suggests that nurses' focus on care and nurture, rather than cure of illness, results in a distinctive ethics. Furthermore, nursing ethics emphasizes the ethics of everyday practice rather than moral dilemmas. Nursing ethics is more concerned with developing the caring relationship than broader principles, such as beneficence and justice. For example, a concern to promote beneficence may be expressed in traditional medical ethics by the exercise of paternalism, where the health professional makes a decision based upon a perspective of acting in the patient's best interests. However, it is argued by some that this approach acts against person-centered values found in nursing ethics. The distinction can be examined from different theoretical angles. Despite the move toward more deontological themes by some, there continues to be an interest in virtue ethics. In nursing ethics and some support for an ethic of the car. This is considered by its advocates to emphasize relationships over abstract principles and therefore to reflect the caring relationship in nursing more accurately than other ethical views. Themes that emphasize the dignity of the patient by promoting a respectful and caring attitude from nurses are also commonly seen. According to Baille Let al., (2008) Nurses have an obligation to defend the dignity of those in their care. Rumbold, G (1999) emphasizes on the ability of the nurse to respond to vulnerable patients by providing dignified care which is a key concept in the field of nursing. This goes hand in hand with the standard ethical theory of respecting dignity for people and their autonomous choices, enabling them to make decisions about their own treatment. Among other things, this grounds the practice of informed consent that should be respected by the nurse, although much of the debate lies in the discussion of cases
The relationship between the narrator and the narrator’s first cat, Pluto, is representative of human nature. He is the perfect picture of an average man during his time, which sets Poe’s scene well. The narrator has an ongoing obsession with animals, starting at a
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...