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The Black Cat Psychopath

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The short story, The Black Cat, depicts how the protagonist develops from a calm and animal loving character to a murdering psychopath. The story introduces the main character as someone who is deeply attracted to all kinds of animals; “From my infancy I was noted for the [...] humanity of my disposition.” This quote describes how conspicuous the narrator’s love for animals was, and shows the docility of the narrator at the beginning of his life. However, later on, the narrator ends up killing his cat, as well as his wife, but he doesn’t feel guilt for it. “I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!” This shows us that the narrator can sleep even with the guilt of murder, which is a characteristic of someone gone …show more content…

The narrator also states, after he kills his wife, that “this hideous murder [is] accomplished,” which tells us that he feels successful after killing his own wife; and this is another an attribute of a psychopath, as said in Portrait of a Psychopath. It states that “Killing [...] makes the killer feel good,” and it is a normal trait for a psychopath, which corresponds with the narrator. The killer in The Black Cat enjoyed his murder and felt accomplished after it, which is exactly how a psychopath would feel after a murder. All of his pets had a fidelity towards the narrator, however, he treated them contemptuously and with aversion. In the article, Definition of Psychopath and What Exactly It Means, the author informs us that a psychopath is “A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in [...] criminal [...] behavior.” The narrator is a criminal, as he has committed the crime of manslaughter, and criminal activity is evident in some

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In Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”, the narrators both reveal their crimes to the police through over-confidence and guilt. Both unreliable, you cannot always believe what they say. The narrators’ arrogance and guilt allow then to reveal their crimes to the police and their true evil selves to the world. In “The Black Cat”, the narrator kills his wife out of anger for the second cat. While she is protecting the cat, he takes an ax to her brain.

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The main types of characterization in “The Black Cat” used to describe the narrator are inner thoughts and actions. The narrator starts out by clarifying that he is most certainly not insane. “Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream.” (3) This shows that the narrator is in denial to the fact that he is insane, which is all the more evidence to that fact that he is, indeed, insane. “…its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me.

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The story takes place in the similar setting of a dark and eerie house, which is described as a "prison". The main character is described as a man who is consumed by his own madness and cruelty, and he is haunted by the ghost of the black cat that he has killed (The Black Cat). The gothic elements in this story serve to create a sense of horror and terror, which shock and scare the reader. The man's descent into madness and his cruelty towards the black cat are meant to be disturbing, and they succeed in creating a feeling of unease in the

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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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The demonstration of the narrator's imagination unconsciously leads his own thoughts to grow into a chaotic mess that ultimately ends in a death. By murdering, it’s his own way of finding peace. He is portrayed as being a sadist, sick man with an unnatural obsession for

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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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The storyteller's record of how he arranged and executed the murder is itemized enough to be credible. He is personally comfortable with the old man's room and sufficiently mindful to realize that he should conceal all proof of the wrongdoing. In spite of the fact that the storyteller confesses toward the denoumet of the story, his confession does not hurt his validity since he demonstrated toward the start of the story that he is beset with an apprehensive condition. The idea of being convicted of the crime outwits him and he confuses the anxious pulsating of his own heart for that of his

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Finally, the narrator discloses why he confesses the successful murder to the police officers. As the story progresses, it is clear through the tone and voice that he is mentally collapsing under the burden of his guilt and psychosis. The story begins with a confession. The narrator tells us, “True! – Nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.”

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Telling the story from the first person point of view a perspective that Poe used quite frequently intensifies the effect of moral shock and horror. With the murder of his wife and the anger given to the cat nothing good happens in this story. The nameless narrator kills his wife and puts her in his wall in his basement to hide up all traces of murder. The cat was a large, beautiful animal who was entirely black.

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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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However, his true morals are revealed when the narrator shows signs of guilt like “My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears.” The narrator’s transition from superiority to guilt represents the reality that the acknowledgement of wrongdoings can either be done consciously or unconsciously, and that the latter has considerable negative

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