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The Black Cat Symbolism Essay

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“The Black Cat”
Everyone has had bad luck from time to time before, some people say that bad luck can come from salt spilling over, a black cat walking under a ladder. In the story “The Black Cat” the author, Edgar Allan Poe, takes this belief and blows the whole idea out of the water and into something different from the usual bad luck. The main protagonist, or the narrator in this case, goes through having bad luck throughout the entire story but this isn’t the same kind of bad luck that regular people would experience. This bad luck leads to him killing his wife and his own home burning down. Edgar Allan Poe uses foreshadowing and symbolism to show the character’s actions in “The Black Cat.”
There are many examples of symbolism in the …show more content…

One problem with the cat building the suspense is that there is suspense near the end but it doesn’t go throughout the entire story for it to connect to the symbol of the story. The suspense building up at the end is from the narrator and the cat, the narrator does these things because of cat. The symbolism and foreshadowing of this story could be showing the actions of the cat instead, but in the story it is the man doing the actions himself. The narrator let the cat “get into his head” practically forcing him do the actions he did. This is why the actions of the cat does not work. The cat could represent killing, but in the story the cat is only giving affection and fear to the narrator. The narrator is the one who decides to turn those feelings into hatred and anger towards his pets and wife. In “The Black Cat” Poe uses foreshadowing and symbolism to show the characters actions. The cat represents the actions of the characters because it's what causes the characters to do what they did. If there not have been a cat in the story at all...None of the things that happened in the story may not have happened at all. The cat also represents bad luck; people experience bad luck, but in this story it is completely different from what people normally consider “bad luck.” People can say that the cat only represents itself, death, or even

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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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The author increases the feeling of anxiety in the story by using foreshadowing. For example, after the narrator obtains the second black cat, he notices that the white patch on the second cat’s chest is forming into something. When the narrator realizes what the shape of the patch on the beast chest is, he states, “It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to have—and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared—it was how, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!” (Poe 4)

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Another theme is the power of the dead over the living. Even when the cat dies he still haunts the narrator after life. This help the madness drive within the characters mind. A barrier is broken between life and death in “The fall of house Usher” the sister rises back in bloodied clothes and “The Fall of the House of Usher” the dead actually comes back to life. “It was …the figure of lady Madeline of House Usher” (Poe 515).

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