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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.
There are many times where the narrator describes his actions towards his loved ones while under the influence of alcohol. Since the narrator is trying to draw the attention to his consumption of alcohol, he tries to make sure that his actions trace back to it. In the short story, the narrator says "But my disease grew upon me -- for what disease is like Alcohol !..."(Poe 23) which shows his addiction for alcohol becoming stronger. The narrator's madness seems to be heightened by the alcohol. He begins to chan...
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Works Cited
Badenhausen, Richard. "Fear And Trembling In Literature Of The Fantastic: Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'." Studies In Short Fiction 29.4 (1992): 487-498. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Bliss, Ann V. "Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity In Poe's “The Black Cat”." Explicator 67.2 (2009): 96-99. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 3 May. 2014.
Cleman, John. "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense." American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 623-640. JSTOR. Web. 1 May. 2014.
Reilly, E. John. "A Source for the Immuration in 'The Black Cat'." Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jun., 1993), pp. 93-95. JSTOR. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
Shulman, Robert. Poe and the Powers of the Mind. Vol. 37. N.p.: The John Hopkins University Press, 1970. 245-62. 2 vols. JSTOR. Web. 3 May 2014.
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
It is said that, after the death of Virginia, Poe turned to the use of alcohol more frequently and his behavior became more erratic. Drinking large amounts of alcohol increases the risk fa...
New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son., 1884. xv-xxvi. EPUB file. Sova, Dawn B. "Poe, Edgar Allan.
Most of Edgar allan Poe’s stories are written in first person and not everyone comes to conclusion that his wild, yet atrocious stories could have linked to his intemperance with alcohol. He does not directly specify that his writings are related to him yet in a way, with his background on susbtance abuse it can be put in theory that it does. In some ways it is reasonable that an author who writes so convincingly about illusion, fantasy, and horror should be suspected for this kind of act. Some argue that it was his fears and anxieties that led Poe to commit to such horrific stories and poems that seem strangely inhuman and in way uncomfortable but what led to these anxiteis and fears? In the text there are qoutes that can link alcohol to
Throughout the life of Edgar Allan Poe, he suffered many unfortunate events and endured several difficult situations. Some speculate that it was these experiences that helped to formulate the famous writing style of Edgar Allan Poe. His dark tales such as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" are horrific, and his poems such as "Alone" and "The Raven" show evidence that his life experiences influenced their dreariness. Poe's story plots and his own life are undeniably related and this relationship is intricately defined in many of his works.
Meyers, J. (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: his life and legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Frank, F. S. (1997). The Poe encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press..
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
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.
Edgar Allen Poe is the author of many great pieces of literature. He uses his narrators to explain situations that are going on in their life. The narrators of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Black Cat" demonstrate their love for mans inhumanity to man and animals through horrific murders.
The main characters in both The Black Cat and The Raven consume alcohol to have their current thoughts blurred or forgotten for the time being. One night he was “...guilty; but it was, at best a feeble and equivocal feeling…again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed!” (Poe 2). The wine might have gotten to his head leading him to hear and see “... a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately Raven...” (Poe 2). The Raven was never there he was imagining it. His state of sorrowfulness and intoxication brought the Raven into his thoughts because of the death of his love. he “...approached and saw, as if graven with an accuracy truly marvelous. There had been a rope about the animal's neck” (Poe #). His guilt lead him to believe that what he saw was true.
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.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. Internet.
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. ...