Alcohol Abuse In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, he writes a cold, heartless story from an unnamed narrator’s point of view. The Black Cat is about the narrator’s current life which he claims to be sane, but throughout the story it is clear he is not. The story focuses on the narrator’s alcohol abuse and how it causes him to have mood swings and violent out lashes to his pets to the point of killing them. Poe writes a story of revenge from the black cat Pluto in this story. Poe uses the narrator’s cold, disturbed character, plot
Before his death, an unnamed narrator begins to tell the reader is sane, but throughout the story it is obvious he is not. The story begins a few years before the present, when the narrator is a well-known honorable person. He confesses that he has a love for cats and dogs because they respect friendship unlike people or humans. The narrator marries young and shows his wife how fun it is owning pets like birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, and a monkey.

He constantly gets drunk which causes him to have mood swings and out lashes against his animals and his wife. His alcoholism can be pointed out as the main motive to his behavior (Stark). All of the animals he owns get some kind of abuse from him, even his beloved cat Pluto. The narrator gets so agitated when his cat bites him. Pluto was only defending himself from the narrator and had to bite the narrator to defend himself. The narrator obviously lets his wrath take over and decides to cut one of his eyes out. No one in their right mind would to this to an animal who did nothing to him. The narrator only felt half guilty for cutting Pluto’s eye out of his socket. At this point in the story, it clear that the narrator’s conscious is no longer right since he can abuse his animals for no reason and cut his favorite pet, Pluto, eye out. This event steers the reader into the darkness of the soul that the narrator now