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Literary Elements In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

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Authors use various literary elements in short stories so their stories have more meaning to them. The short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan poe is about a guy who has an alcohol problem and he is married and has a black cat. He was abusive to both his cat and wife since he had a drinking problem but he would not physically abuse his wife. He loves his black cat Pluto but one day he got drunk and caused him to do something. Later on in the story he finds a cat that is just like Pluto but he has a splotch of white. He starts to like this other cat and then something happens to that cat also. In the story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe uses point of view and symbolism in order to convey the narrator’s view of things and how his drinking …show more content…

' The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing” (Poe 3). This shows that since he killed his cat he got karma. His house burns down because he got karma for killing his cat and his house burned down the same day he killed Pluto. Poe also uses the same literary device when he said “ Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!” (Poe 6). This happens days later when the narrator murders his wife this happened because his wife was gonna stop him from killing the cat but instead he killed his

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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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Here he reflects upon his childhood of a cat and the story drastically changes to where he kills this cat. The inspiration of his cat leads to mental unsteadiness to where he kills his wife in the end. " Sat, the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder" (Poe 14). The power of government establishes the laws. Therefore he had broken them when commuting murder to his cat for animal abuse, and first degree murder for his wife.

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The following night after the narrator kills the cat, the house catches on fire and the next day the narrator comes back to the house to see the ruins and came to see a group of people around a strange bas relief on the wall. The narrator was terrified when he saw what the bas relief was and the narrator writes, “There had been a rope about the animal’s neck” (Poe 3).

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The story continues with an event that is unfortunately far more terrible and unexpected than the previous events. The narrator allows his increasing anger towards the second black cat to lead him to killing his wife. His temper and hatred that began with the second black cat eventually ended up impacted him and his wife. The narrator states, “I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan” (Poe 5).

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In these two stories Poe uses foreshadowing in way that if the reader spots the small details or Poes “word playing “ he/she can predict what will happen or get a hint of what will happen. In Black Cat there are few foreshadows. One foreshadow is when the narrator sees a cat in the wall and Pluto`s color being black is believed to be unlucky and in this story the narrator is unhappy and unlucky. The narrator gets gouth because of a cat being inside a wall.

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Three of the most important aspects of any story are the point of view, characterization and plot. In the short stories “Geraldine Moore the Poet,” “The Story-Teller,” and “Enemy Territory” this statement proves to be true. With a good analysis, all of these things can be found in the stories. Additionally, the point of view, characterization and plot can relate to the theme. The point of view needs to be scrutinized throughout the whole story.

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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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Edgar Allan Poe’s use of literary devices to show the how fear of the characters in his stories are both helpful and harmful to them. Poe shows how the fears and obsessions of the narrators in his tales either lead to their inevitable death, or their miraculous survival. Edgar Allan Poe uses many literary devices in his texts, such as symbols, ironies, and figurative language, to show the strange and distorted ways of the characters, and the repercussion of their fears and obsessions. In Poe’s stories, a literary device he uses frequently throughout his stories, are symbols.

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The Insanity of “The Black Cat” Edgar Allan Poe left the ending of most of his stories enigmatic and therefore, open to controversial interpretations. Many debate whether the endings are the result of insanity or of haunting. It is evident that “The Black Cat” ending is caused by insanity, based on multiple re-occurrences that happen to the narrator. Many situations from the story support this claim.

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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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In this story, it is implied that the black cat he had killed was getting his revenge upon him from, despite being dead. For instance, the day that he killed the black cat his house burnt down. This seems to not be any coincidence, as the image of the dead cat with a noose around his neck is marked onto one of the walls. The Cat also takes revenge in the form of the man’s second cat. The second cat slowly makes the man grow more and more insane.

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Though Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories like, The Cask of Amontillado, to his poems like, The Raven, Poe’s shows his writing style to use physical imagery and connotative syntax to show ,imagery in his writing. Throughout his life, Poe had always lived through the most chaotic and evil of time. His parents died while he was 3 years old. After his parents died, he lived with another family member who never accepted him as their own son. Later on in life, Poe had served in the military and at that point he started writing poems.

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The narrator is confined to his path of madness and drunkenness. The narrator’s irritation gets worse, and he attempts to kill the new cat. His wife interjects, and the narrator kills his wife in anger. He chooses to hide his wife’s body in the walls of the cellar.

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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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