The Black Cat Psychology

In Poe’s stories it is easy to see that the psychology of the human mind as a theme is dealt with in many of his short stories. Poe explores the complexity of love/hate as a theme as well as murder in many of the stories I have read. In his stories there is the reoccurring role of a man driven mad by someone he loves, which eventually leads the protagonist to come to hate the person they once loved and commit the ultimate sin; murder. According to Joseph J. Moldenhauer, ‘The protagonist, who is also typically the narrator of the piece, is driven by inner compulsions or beset by horrific external forces, or both; he seems to assert no control over his acts, and moves inexorably toward destruction’ (830). This can be seen in stories such as

In ‘The Black Cat’ we meet a man, who claims that what we might read may make the reader write him off as crazy, but pleads for the reader to hear what is it is he is trying to say as he is dying and he wishes to ‘unburthen (his) soul’(349). He goes onto say that if he tells his story there might be a reason found to answer his question of why it was that he did what he did, that would prove to be more reasonable and rational than his own theory. The narrator claims that he was never one to be of violent tendencies. He was a child noted for his gentle qualities and understanding nature. The narrator claims to have had a great love for animals, spending much of his time caring for them. This trait remained with the narrator into adulthood, and it was one that he found pleasure in (349). The narrator talks of a cat that belonged to his wife. This cat was a source of near constant companionship for several years until the speakers temperament began to change due to his excessive consumption of alcohol. The speaker admits that this over-consumption began to change his gentle nature and behaviour over time. He became ‘more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others’ (349). As the speakers alcoholism worsened with time, his love for all things living diminished significantly, eventually concluding in what can only be described as hate. The speaker describes a night on which he had too much to drink and as a result of his intoxicated state, he cut the eyeball of his cat, Pluto, straight from the cat’s eye socket as the cat, in a fright, had nipped him. The speaker than goes onto talk of how he strangled the cat, by slipping a hangman’s noose around the creature’s neck (351). The narrator claims that he carried out this act as he felt guilt and remorse for the crime he had previously committed on the cat. Later in the night the speaker is woken