ipl-logo

The Never Dying Beast In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

919 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Edgar allan poe mental state

The Never Dying Beast There had always been a fine line between sanity and insanity. Without fail, a person’s mental stability is always questioned and the thought of them being sick and twisted weighs them down like anchors and drown them out at sea. this is especially true in Edgar Allan Poe’s works. In the ending of his short story, “The Black Cat”, to leaves the reader questioning the narrator’s sanity. But another question begins to surface; is the narrator insane or is he haunted by the supernatural? Throughout the story, there is compelling evidence that authenticates the theory of the narrator being not insane but indeed haunted; the cat drawn on the lone surveying wall of the narrator’s house fire, the second cat missing an eye and …show more content…

His house was ablaze. He barely made it out with his life let along his life’s savings. the thought that the atrocity was related to the cause of the disaster danced around the narrator’s mind. Though never did he let that thought settle in he knew the truth and somewhere in the back of his head this thought had planted it’s feet. Some people believe that in his drunkenness he caused the fire but others have found belief in that it was his cat, Pluto, (that he hung) came back for revenge. The most astonishing thing was the “graven in bas-relief upon the white, the figure of a gigantic cat. The image was given with an accuracy truly marvelous. there was a rope around the animal’s neck” (Poe 14). This drawing was a way of how Pluto marked his territory and got revenge for how brutally and wretchedly he was beat and killed. with this fire so went the narrator;s other pets and his lifer’s savings. The narrator stated “my entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair” (Poe 14). this despair grade him mire towards his lust for alcohol. Being drunk is similar to a temporary high and the high one gets the lower they are …show more content…

The drawing of the cat with a noose around it’s neck on the only surveying wall of the narrator’s house, after the house fire, the second cat missing an eye and having a white ring around it’s throat suggesting the skin there was torn and scar tissue has replaced it, and the ear pricing shriek heard from inside the wall, even though both once living things inside had already been dead for about four days help support my claim that there narrator is haunted. A vast majority of Poe’s works have debatable endings that leave the reader question the mental state or the morals of the narrator or main characters. These endings are always greatly debated among

Show More
Related

Suspense In Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat

483 Words | 2 Pages

Early into the story the wife makes frequent allusion, “all black cats are witches in disguise” (Poe 1), which is a popular ancient notation. This tells the reader that they should be suspicious of Pluto because he could possibly be a witch. When the narrator introduces Pluto to the reader he writes “Pluto—this was the cats name” (Poe 1). In Roman mythology Pluto is the god of the underworld.

Read More

The Black Cat

704 Words | 3 Pages

Personal subjective antagonist of the Narrator is the eyeless Black Cat. The animal reminds the Narrator of the tortures he caused to his other cat, Pluto. Narrator believes that the Black Cat deprived him of peace and made him murder his spouse with an axe: “The cat foil owed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness” (Poe 22). The Black Cat simply wouldn 't leave the protagonist alone, making him irritated. The Black Cat was also the one to expose the Narrator.

Read More

Examples Of Suspense In The Black Cat

532 Words | 3 Pages

Next, Poe develops suspense in the black cat through the hanging of Pluto. The narrator is unbalanced and insane, yet hangs Pluto with full intent by the limb of a tree. The narrator states, Quote 1 “hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes with the bitterest remorse at my heart” (Poe 2). The violence that the narrator displays with the hanging of Pluto enroots anxiety for the perusal to know.

Read More

Symbolism And Foreshadowing In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

620 Words | 3 Pages

He and his wife had many pets, he became very fond of the black cat named Pluto. Pluto and the narrator loved each other equally. The narrator started drinking, he slowly started drinking alcohol more and more each day. He was an alcoholic and became abusive physically and mentally. One night he was intoxicated, thought the cat was neglecting him, and gouged Pluto's eye out.

Read More

Alcoholism In The Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe

890 Words | 4 Pages

He was disgusted and annoyed by the cat’s fondness, so he began to avoid it. He refrained from physically abusing the cat for a few weeks because he still felt a sense of shame for his former deed of cruelty. Eventually he was unable to resist, especially when the cat would get under his feet, nearly tripping him. He also discovered the white spot on the cat’s chest had taken the shape of the gallows, the mode of execution that took Pluto’s life. One day when the narrator and his wife went down to the cellar of their new building, he found an axe.

Read More

Comparing The Black Cat And The Masque Of The Red Death

535 Words | 3 Pages

Somewhere in that chain he tries to forget his problems with alcohol, but that just turned into another problem. Luckily, he had another solution: writing. Poe’s inability to cope with both alcoholism and the large amount of loved ones that died in his life had led him to majorly focus on those two topics within his writing. By creating characters who had negative experiences with alcohol,

Read More

Suspense In The Black Cat

604 Words | 3 Pages

After the narrator killed all of his animals he went to a bar and found second black cat. His wife loved this cat but the narrator hated it. When the narrator was walking down the steps, the second black cat tripped him and he got ferrous. Poe states “uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hither, to stayed my hand, I wished” (4&5). This builds tension by making the reader hold his or her breath.

Read More

The Black Cat Unreliable Essay

516 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator in ‘The Black Cat’ seems to act like two people at once . The narrator starts his story by trying to tell his readers he is not crazy. He says, “Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream (“The Black Cat”).” This is a good example of unreliable narrator, because only crazy people try really hard to make others believe they are not crazy. The narrator does not help his case when he admits to hurting the cat for fun.

Read More

Who Is Poe Insane

1023 Words | 5 Pages

He describes it in full detail, “One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; hung it with the bitterest remorse at my heart; hung it because I knew that it had loved me.” (Poe 360). Even while aware Pluto did nothing wrong, he murders and hangs the cat. He is even aware enough to know this could jeopardize him being redeemable by God. “... And because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin--a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it--if such thing were possible--even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.”

Read More

The Black Cat Argumentative Essay

647 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

Suspense In Edger Allen Poe's The Black Cat

450 Words | 2 Pages

In the words of Stephen King "monsters are real and ghosts are real to they live inside us and sometimes they win. " This is shown in Edger Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" when the narrator starts to lose his sanity to alcoholism. As the narrator starts to lose his sanity he commits a series of violent and criminal acts of which he feels no remorse. In Poe's "The Black Cat" he uses many literary devices such as onomatopoeia, foreshadowing, and imagery to develop suspense.

Read More

Analysis Of The Black Cat In Oedipus Rex

1061 Words | 5 Pages

Both cats are abnormally large, black, missing an eye, and extremely “sagacious (64).” The only notable difference being the white spot on the second cat’s chest, which eventually turns into gallows, reminding the narrator of how he brutally killed the first cat. The cats name, Pluto, is a reference to the Greek god of death, representing just how uncontrollable the second cat is. The earlier cat’s innocence likeability allows it to be the victim of the narrator’s actions, as it represents the forced submission of women, slave, and child to man. The second cat, on the other hand has an annoying, almost omnipresent nature, allowing it to exercise complete psychological control over the main character.

Read More

Compare And Contrast The Black Cat And The Cat From Hell

854 Words | 4 Pages

It is also an unusual situation, because in the story, after he hanged the cat and went to sleep, his house suddenly burns out of nowhere (“I was aroused…” | Paragraph 10), and the members of the household, including the man, successfully escaped, and pluto, the cat he hanged, has resurrected into another black cat (“It was a black

Read More

The Narrator's Anima

164 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More

The Black Cat Psychological Analysis

909 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

More about The Never Dying Beast In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

Open Document