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Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's Black Cat
Summary of the black cat by edgar allan poe
Symbolism in the black cat essay
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For example, after the narrator gouges his cat's eye out, the cat becomes petrified of him. As a result the narrator ". . .slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree" (Poe 9). The narrator's reasoning for this was his incessant drinking and short temperament, although that is hardly an excuse. Later on in the story, the narrator finds another cat, who he also attempts to kill for no good reason.
What gives the reader that feeling of being on the edge of their seat? Why would he want the reader to anticipate what’s going to happen next? That is how the author expresses tension. The author does this by using literary devices. Edgar Allen Poe builds suspense in “The Black Cat” by using specific literary devices—foreshadowing, allusion, and slow pace.
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).
In “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe there is shown to be a mastery of poetic devices impacting sound through the use of alliteration, couplets, and euphonies. In line 26 Edgar Allan Poe writes, “ doubting, dreaming dreams” (26). Poe's use of alliteration allows the words to slide right off of the audiences tongue with the b sound as it is read aloud. Poe also shows a mastery poetic devices through the use of couplets. In “The Raven” there are many couplets including “door...door” and “Lenore...Lenore” which allows the readers to digest the information better as it both rhymes and directs attention to the specific words(4-5.
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.
Morgan Lainge Ms. Mynatt English 2 Honors 27 January 2023 Analytical Allusions Through many of Poe’s works, he has shown and emphasized the importance of mythical figures. He has shown this by making the female characters captivating like goddesses, and comparable to angels, especially in his poems. Poe uses Roman, Greek mythology, and Biblical references to help readers understand his stories. Edgar Allen Poe’s works such as “To Helen”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Raven” all use mythical figures to express beauty through his characters, to describe horror through his allusions, and to create suspense through his stories and poems. Continuously throughout Poe’s works, such as “To Helen,” he writes about mythical figures to illustrate
The narrator got another cat after this and became even more insane in the way he felt about this black cat.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s short novel “The Black Cat” the narrator unburdens his soul the night prior to his execution. He begins by describing his amiable and humane nature, and that he from childhood had a strong love for animals. He married at a young age a woman who also loved pets. Their household had numerous animals and the narrators absolute favorite was a large beautiful black cat, named Pluto after the god of the dead. They had a special bond between them that lasted several years until the man´s character changed due to alcoholism, and he became ill-tempered and abused both wife and pets.
The narrator of “The Black Cat” is an alcoholic. By mistreating his pets and wife, he demonstrates how his addiction affects him. Alcoholism itself is an act of insanity because alcoholics see things in an entirely different manner than sober people. The narrator had a sufficient childhood and had a great deal of pets. Once he grew addicted
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.
On this story the author Edgar Allan Poe sees himself in the suffering of the unknown narrator. He is a person who suffers a lot in his life and passes through a lot of things. Later, he begins to hate many people and things because of the suffering that he is passing through. On this particular story he has an old neighbor who is a blind person that has develop many other senses but he doesn’t have his vision. The author on this story loves the old man, except the fact that the old man has a blue pale eye and he hate it so much that he disgust his neighbor so he decides to kill him.
James Gargano believes the black cat of Poe’s short story is a direct analogue to the narrator, with inclinations for both good and evil. However, Jungian psychology reveals the cat as a function of the narrator’s anima. Jung argues that instinct, like a cat, commands a wider range of perceptions because it relies on irrational impulses. As the cat grows intolerable, Jung argues that the narrator’s subconscious begins to express itself through abusive acts toward the wife and cat in order to gain control over his anima. The narrator tries to remove his anima through the hanging the cat; however, failure is shown in the cat’s reappearance.
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.
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.
“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.
