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Examples Of Alcoholism In The Black Cat

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The Black Cat and Alcoholism Written in August 19,1843, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe is the account of a drunkard who kills not only his cat, but his wife for no logical reasons, other than rage and paranoia brought from the evils of alcohol. This narrative is quite conducive with Poe’s personal views, as he was strongly against the recreational use of alcohol, contrary to popular belief. The Narrator of The Black Cat details his upbringing, describing himself, possibly falsely, as a kind child who loved animals almost unconditionally. He recounts his teenage years and his early marriage. The marriage he reveals was slowly damaged with the rise of his addiction to alcohol, as to why his rampant need of alcohol started, we are never told. The narrator discusses his black cat, one which his wife, also a lover of animals, had gotten him. Eventually the Narrator recounts, “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight …show more content…

I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat, a very large one, fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the

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By Edgar’s middle years he was an alcoholic and ruined many jobs. The Black Cat and the Cask of Amontillado were stories that relates to his alcoholism. The Black Cat

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In the story, the narrator attacks and wounds his cat while he is extremely drunk. He is overcome with the ‘fiery demon of alcohol’, much like Poe became before he died. In short, Poe’s life was rather terrible, and it’s apparent that these dark events in his life stimulated his unique and creepy style of writing, which is what he’s famous

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In many stories, insanity serves as a deciding factor in the outcome of the story. Though this was common in many of the works during the Romantic period, few authors were able to illustrate insanity like Edgar Allan Poe. Insanity appears to be a recurring theme in many of Poe's works, especially the poem "The Raven" and the short story "The Black Cat." In "The Raven" Poe conveys the power the loss of a loved one can have on someone's sanity.

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“The Tell-Tale Heart” vs. “The Black Cat” “I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.” This quote from Edgar Allan Poe portrays the plot in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” precisely. Both of these tales bring you into the mind of two fascinating narrators. These ghastly short stories written by Poe in the 1840’s are quite different, but they share striking similarities. “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are similar in several ways.

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The narrator pushed the man to kill his wife but then waits to expose the man. In the quote “It was the same horrible animal whose craft had tricked me into murder.” the narrator is trying to blame the cat for the crime he committed. The Antagonist defeats the Protagonist because at the end of the story the cat is found in the wall along with the dead body of the Protagonist wife. I believe that

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704 Words | 3 Pages

Personal subjective antagonist of the Narrator is the eyeless Black Cat. The animal reminds the Narrator of the tortures he caused to his other cat, Pluto. Narrator believes that the Black Cat deprived him of peace and made him murder his spouse with an axe: “The cat foil owed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness” (Poe 22). The Black Cat simply wouldn 't leave the protagonist alone, making him irritated. The Black Cat was also the one to expose the Narrator.

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532 Words | 3 Pages

Next, Poe develops suspense in the black cat through the hanging of Pluto. The narrator is unbalanced and insane, yet hangs Pluto with full intent by the limb of a tree. The narrator states, Quote 1 “hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes with the bitterest remorse at my heart” (Poe 2). The violence that the narrator displays with the hanging of Pluto enroots anxiety for the perusal to know.

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1125 Words | 5 Pages

The poems, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Masque of the Red Death can he examined as Poe’s thoughts toward the world around him. The Black Cat illustrates what alcohol can do to a person’s character, The Tell-Tale Heart depicts his thoughts towards John Allan, his foster father. And The Masque of the Red Death is seen as his revenge to the happy world he was not part

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Also, when reading “ The Black Cat”, Poe will not keep the reader up-to-date with the natural world. He likes to keep his readers guessing. This alone makes the narrator unreliable. When the Black Cat came back after the narrator killed it, both he and the reader were very shocked.

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The narrator got another cat after this and became even more insane in the way he felt about this black cat.

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In the gruesome short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe a nameless narrator tells his story of his drunken and moody life before he gets hung the next day. The intoxicated narrator kills his favorite cat, Pluto and his wife with an axe. Soon enough, the narrator gets caught and there he ends up, in jail. Although, most readers of “The Black Cat” have argued the narrators insanity, more evidence have shown that he is just a moody alcoholic with a lousy temper.

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Compare/Contrast paragraph Edgar Allan Poe’s stories “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” have similarities and differences. Some of the similarities are in the way the story was told and the narrators’ mindset. As a beginning, the stories have lots of common things in the way they were told. They are both written in first-person point of view and they both start from the prison. For example the main character in “The Black Cat” said “My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.

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Alcohol is a noteworthy theme throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s writing. This may be because of Poe’s struggle with alcoholism. There are two prominent stories Poe has written with strong themes of alcoholism. These stories are the “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat”. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, alcohol plays a large role in the story.

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Edgar Allan Poe addresses the dark and gruesome side of human nature in his writing “The Black Cat”, which during that time and even now are perceived as radical ideas. This dark human nature is displayed in Poe’s writing as the narrator recalls the happenings of a most erratic event. The narrator, a pet lover with a sweet disposition, in this story succumbs to the most challenging aspects of human nature including that of addiction, anger, and perverseness. To the Christian believer, human’s sinful flesh leads people to do wrong because that is their natural tendency.

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“Pluto – this was the cat’s name – was my favorite pet and playmate” (Poe 520). This man is more violent and he hangs and burns that cat he adored. The narrator is not so lucky though, because another black cat follows and haunts him on his way home. This cat also drives him crazy and he tries to kill the cat but ends up killing his wife instead. The narrator buries his wife in the wall and when the police come looking for her body, the cat helps them find her corpse.

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