ipl-logo

The Black Cat Research Paper

1139 Words5 Pages

“The Black Cat”: Poe’s Romantic and Confession Tale Edgar Allan Poe is known as famous American writer, especially in writing mystery and macabre tales. “The Black Cat” is one of Poe’s great works. Though the tale contains a lots of horror scenes, it is not suitable to be considered as horror tale. The main thesis of the essay is romanticism, confession, tension between fabula and plot and five forms of evil to prove that the main content of the tale is romanticism and confession in Poe’s “The Black Cat”. To show that Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a romantic tale, First we need to know the background information for Romanticism. Romanticism is a kind of literature form in approximate period from 1780 to 1850. It emphasizes strong emotion, imagination …show more content…

There are five forms of evil in “The Black Cat” They are superstition, alcoholism, Christian myths of hell, the spirit of perverseness, and evil vocabulary. For superstition, the black cat can be the witch, and the witch represent the devil. This can be one reason of these unlucky and horror behaviors. Alcohol is another evil appeared in the tale. Alcohol is mentioned many times in “The Black Cat” and it is the cause of the killing the cat. The word fiend indicate that alcohol is sent by demon, and it makes the writer torture and kill for no reason. Christian myths of hell also show up in the tale to represent evil. For illustration, “demon instantly possessed me” and “fiendish malevolence” (Poe 852) mean devil take body while soul can survive. The following context morning and night represents brightness and darkness, and the transition from the darkness to brightness means from guilty to innocent. Another evil is the spirit of perverseness. Human’s nature can be violent and evil, and sometimes people will do wrong things like the author. This is the reason why we make confessions. Related to the humanity, and we expect people to forgive. Therefore, there are diverse types of confession after the writer commits a crime. The last evil is the naming style and the choice of the word. In the tale, the description becomes more and more unacceptable, and it becomes closer to the demon. The typical example is the second cat. Though the second cat is introduced as an ordinary cat, it brings disasters and become a symbol of guilty and punishment in the end of the tale. All five forms of evil should be confessed in the tale, and it is the reason why the evil is

Show More
Related

Comparing Tell-Tale Heart And The Black Cat

330 Words | 2 Pages

The narrator tries to kill his black cat with an axe and his wife intervenes and offsets his thoughts and he accidently kills her. In both the stories the narrators killed someone they loved and although they loved them they don’t feel bad about hiding the body successfully as they thought. In Poe’s other story, The Cask of Amontillado, the genre is also one of horror. The narrator in this story also displays a psychotic personality as he happily tells the story of a murder he committed. However, the narrator didn’t love the man named Fortunato that he killed and even had a history with him.

Read More

How Does Pluto Symbolize In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

667 Words | 3 Pages

The author Edgar Allen Poe was mostly horror works and he inspired horror authors of today. In many of Poe’s works, he features an animal that is usually darker in color, that usually represents the main character’s deteriorating mindset because of the way they react to the animals, like speaking to the animal, thinking they are talking to them and thinking the animal is taunting them with its presence. His use of darker and less popular animals shows his character’s growing madness within them, he shows this deterioration through a cat, a raven, and a serpent. In his work, “The Black Cat,” he uses cats to show the growing insanity of the main character.

Read More

Comparing The Cask Of Amontillado, And The Tell-Tale Heart

1448 Words | 6 Pages

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Tell-Tale Heart," the author employs the literary devices of unreliable narration, symbolism, and irony to delve into the dark and often twisted aspects of the human psyche, exposing how obsession, guilt, and revenge can drive individuals to commit heinous acts of violence. Furthermore, in addition to the literary devices mentioned above, Poe also utilizes themes of insanity and the supernatural to further explore the depths of the human psyche in his stories. In "The Black Cat," the supernatural element of the cat's reappearance after its death adds to the horror of the story and raises questions about the nature of the narrator's madness. In "The Cask of Amontillado,"

Read More

The Unreliable Narrator In Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Black Cat'

259 Words | 2 Pages

In “The Black Cat” written by Edgar Allen Poe, he does not seem like a reliable narrator. The narrator seems unreliable because first, he is claiming his love and fondness for all animals, especially the cat. Then, things take a turn when he comes home drunken and he cuts out the eye of the “beast” as he calls it. In the text, he mentions the now dead cat, that he killed, when he says that he wishes to destroy the animal with a blow but he refrains, because of his memory of his “former crime” which was hurting and eventually killing the other cat. He also mentions the cat when he says, “And a brute beast-whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed.”

Read More

Cask Of Amontillado, And The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

521 Words | 3 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th century American author and poet. He was one of the earliest writers of short stories and created stories and poems that are timeless. All in all, anyone that has read his stories can conclude that they all have a chilling tone to them and are mainly focused around death and revenge. Three examples of stories are “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” All of these have narrators that fill the readers with tremor and fear because of their devious and insane ways.

Read More

The Role Of Alcoholism In Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat

250 Words | 1 Pages

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”, written in 1843, we see the downward spiral of the narrators acts and events, powered by his alcoholism, that ultimately lead him to kill his wife. These past events have the narrator feeling a sense of remorse for his actions. At first, the narrator describes himself as a person who loves animals along with his wife. His favourite pet was Pluto his black cat. However, alcohol had led the narrator to verbally abuse and threaten his wife and ultimately kill his cat, Pluto, by hanging it.

Read More

The Black Cat Unreliable Essay

516 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

What Is The Mood Of The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

413 Words | 2 Pages

An obvious aspect of Poe’s short stories and poems that he wrote is the setting and mood. In most of his writings, the setting and mood of the story is surrounded by a sense of gloom. In one of his works, “The Black Cat”, shows that after Poe killed his wife he had to hid all the evidence

Read More

Edgar Allan Poe Research Paper

983 Words | 4 Pages

These stories include “The Black Cat”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, often told by a first-person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the a character's psyche. In his Gothic tales Poe employed a symbolic method that he gives to poems such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, and “Ligeia”, an mysterious quality that peaks their interest. Poe was also interested in using the interest in science to peak his interest in readers, and draw them into his

Read More

Examples Of Human Nature In The Black Cat

588 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

Alcoholism In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

1182 Words | 5 Pages

The problems of alcoholism and insanity are recurring themes in Poe’s literary works. One can say that “The Black Cat,” one of Poe’s short stories, portrays much of the author’s own views on his substance abuse problems and mental illness. The unnamed narrator from “The Black Cat,” struggles with his addiction to alcohol and his hatred for two cats become prevailing. The narrator states, however, that he was never like this before he loved animals, “never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe, 3).

Read More

Gothic Literature In 'Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat'

931 Words | 4 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe used gothic literature to show the human condition. In both stories the plot ends with a murder and they both are involving a crazy person who has lost there mind. furthermore, they both could not handle the guilt that is included with a murder case. Of the two short stories, “Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” written by Edgar Allan Poe, they both use Romantic characteristics including obsession, Acts of Violence, and guilt to show people have capability of being evil. Guilt is used in the short story to represent humanity.

Read More

Violence In Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat

554 Words | 3 Pages

This essay will be focusing on the world where his story “The Black Cat” takes place. This world of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” is unnatural, with heavy themes of violence. Characters in this world behave unnaturally with violence and cruelty, and murder is commonplace. “The Black Cat”" starts off a man who loves his black cat Pluto. Though he loves Pluto he begin starts to have outbursts due to alcoholism.

Read More

Themes In Gothic Literature

440 Words | 2 Pages

Gothic Essay In gothic literature, emotion is one of the biggest parts of any author’s work. The shorts stories written by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Richard Matheson’s “Prey”, Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Horacia Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow” all incorpórate violence and supernatural in their works. The authors present the common themes in order to give a sense of how the characters feel emotionally. Also the common themes allow the readers to feel sympathy for the characters.

Read More

Essay About Black Cats

1215 Words | 5 Pages

One of these stories about the Icon Halloween says that the Celtic Druids eventually came to be viewed as witches by the Church. It was believed that witches could shape-shift, and that they would usually disguise themselves as cats. Black cats were known to be witches familiars and are beings that aided witches in performing witchcraft. It became the thought of everyone, that when the Halloween celebration comes to include the iconic “wicked witch,” the black cat was also included.

Read More

More about The Black Cat Research Paper

Open Document