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The Black Cat Psychological Analysis

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Poe 's short story, "The Black Cat" depicts three primary psychological components of the human personality that includes perversity, irrationality and guilt or blame. From the earliest starting point of the story, it is plainly comprehended that the principle character is superstitious. He reviews his significant other 's words as “my wife, …, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 1). The character calls his significant other irrational, however as the story continues, it can be seen that he is much more irrational himself. Additionally, the character starts to trust in the rebirth of the black cat. After observing the second cat, he rapidly brings into mind the presence …show more content…

In "The Black Cat," there are numerous cases where guilt can be believed to presumably having control over the main character 's identity. Sadly, this guilt does not keep him from stopping him from continuing with his sins. The lead character changes from a lovely individual to a wild one who beverages, reviles, and murders his partner and pets. Hence, his pets begin to stay away from him as he says, “I fancied that the cat avoided my presence” (Poe 5). Therefore, he becomes more abusive and aggressive upon receiving ignorance from his pets, especially Pluto, the black cat. In his anger, he removes the eye of his most loved pet, Pluto. Likewise, he hangs the cat for no apparent reason, but since of the blame he has of doing incorrectly. Besides, after he brings the second cat home, he begins growing hatred towards it since it reminds him of what he has done in his past. Correspondingly, the sentiment blame changes into his hatred and thus a strive to murder the second cat. Individuals regularly attempt to conceal their guilt from themselves from individuals around them. In like manner, the principle character drinks significantly more to conceal his deeds from his own self. Subsequent to killing his wife, he tries to conceal his activity from whatever is left of the world by walling her up in the basement. It is in the mind of a man that when he is certain that he won 't be suspected, the feeling of guilt vanishes from his mind for quite a while, yet returns once in a while. The killer in the story says, “… and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into my house, I soundly and transguilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!” (Poe 6). Even so, in the wake of walling his wife in the basement, his guilt does not control him from spilling out reality of the murder before

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[Eventually when] the cat followed me [the main character]…, [it] exasperated me [him] to madness. I [he attempted to] aim a blow [with an axe] at the animal… Goaded, by the interference [of his wife], into a rage more than demoniacal, I [he] withdrew my [his] arm from her [his wife’s] grasp and buried the axe in her [narrator’s wife’s] brain (Poe, page 4).” Because the narrator was annoyed and infuriated, he kills his wife, as well, for interfering with his plan to kill the second cat they adopted; thus this shows the main character’s corrupted and malicious mind. The former joyful, generous man sprouts into an evil and a criminal, who murders Pluto, his cat, and his wife.

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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.

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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).

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The Black Cat is a short story that shares a tale of a man and his cat, Pluto. The man was once kind and loved animals, but due to a large intake of alcohol, he becomes aggressive towards not only his wife, but Pluto as well. The narrator explains his change of heart by saying, “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.”

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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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Many authors or poets use this theme to depict how past experiences or events affects people mentally and can leave them demented in many cases. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe encompasses this theme. While searching for answers from the raven, “respite the nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore” (Poe 439) the man cannot get over the loss of his wife causing psychological issues for the man such as trying to obtain info from a raven about his dead wife. Correspondingly, in “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, the man becomes agitated with the cat and decides to hang it. He “hung it because (he) knew in doing so (he) was committing a sin” (Poe 2).

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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.

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We’ve all read stories before but not like Edgar Allen Poe’s, his stories will question everything you think and maybe even horrify you, but one things for certain you will never be unimpressed with is work “There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” From this quote you can interpret many things. Edgar Allen Poe is a very dark and gloomy man who is tying to survive in this world but you can see that darkness seems to always consume his life. Something else that stuck out is Edgar Allen Poe an alcoholic himself that seems to find it’s way into this story. For instance in many of his story like Tell Tale Heart the content is very dark and defiantly borderline insane in this paper I will be showing you what Edgar Allen Poe as I see fit.

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The narrator becomes increasingly fixated on the wallpaper, ultimately seeing a woman trapped behind it. This fixation represents her own confinement and the breakdown of her mental state. Similarly, in "The Black Cat," the narrator becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and addiction, leading to his own confinement in a self-imposed prison of his own guilt and fear. The black cat serves as a physical manifestation of his guilt and addiction, a constant reminder of his inner turmoil and confinement.

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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 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

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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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His alcoholism causes him to be abusive and eventually leads him cutting Pluto’s eye out and hanging him. The same night of Pluto’s hanging, the man’s house burns down, where he sees the impression of a giant cat with a noose around his neck on one of the walls of the burnt house. Eventually he gets another black cat with some white fur. He starts to hate this cat, so he also kills it.

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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.

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In the story, the narrator becomes addicted to alcohol, causing his many violent acts. He describes it as a disease that, “...grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol!—even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.” (Poe, 2) Addiction is most likely one of the most dangerous of human nature because it can consume your life. Poe even includes that the narrator’s, “...original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.” (Poe, 2) Poe takes this idea to an extreme, but brings the attention to the detrimental effects of letting any one thing have too much possession of your

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