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The Unintentional Murder In Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat

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The Unintentional Murder Do you believe in superstitions? Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” gives us accounts of bad luck and death often thought of as being associated with a black cat. The narrator, imprisoned for murder, struggles with the evil inside of him which leads to animal cruelty and eventually the barbaric murder of his adored wife. Alcoholism, mental instability, and increased violent behavior lead to the unintentional murder of his wife. The narrator suffers from alcoholism. “But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like alcohol” (Poe 719). He is fully aware of his disease and how it is taking over his life, yet he continues to indulge. The narrator violently cuts out the eye of his beloved cat Pluto and “soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed” (719). He is fully aware that what he is doing is wrong, but he chooses to drown his memories in alcohol. “One night as [he] sat, half stupefied” he begins to see strange and unusual objects (721). It is becoming more clear that the alcohol is taking a tremendous effect on his mind. …show more content…

He refers to the things he is about to tell as ordinary and common household events. The story opens with the narrator stating “Yet, mad am I not” (Poe 718). Even though he is about to be put to death for murder, he is trying to convince his audience of his sanity. After his house burns down, there is one wall left standing and he sees “upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat” (720). He truly believes he is seeing the cat he had hung just the night before. After the murder of his wife he seems to feel no guilt and “soundly and tranquilly slept” (723). His mental stability is becoming more questionable as he continues with such violent behaviors, yet, feels no

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The following night after the narrator kills the cat, the house catches on fire and the next day the narrator comes back to the house to see the ruins and came to see a group of people around a strange bas relief on the wall. The narrator was terrified when he saw what the bas relief was and the narrator writes, “There had been a rope about the animal’s neck” (Poe 3).

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Edgar Allen Poe was an amazing writer whose life ended much sooner than expected on October 7, 1849. His cause of death is an unknown and very controversial topic. Some say that he died of alcohol poisoning, while others believe that he died due to a case of rabies. Some think that on his journey to the North he had a large amount of an alcoholic beverage which lead him to die before he could reach his destination. According to Burton R. Pollin and Robert E. Benedetto, two professors from CUNY and the University of South Carolina, “ Evidence of Poe’s chronic binges is strewn through his letters in periodic admissions of ‘recoveries’ and promises to ….

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After her death, Poe was alone and died in 1849. It can be assumed, that the mental illness of the narrator reflects the issues of the author. It is also possible that it was written from a personal perspective (Bullis p.5). The narrator, who directly tells the reader that he was nervous, insists on that he is not mad. He relates to a story of an old man whom he dearly loves.

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The narrator believes himself to be very intelligent and clever when he goes into the old man’s room at midnight. Poe’s word choice of “caution” and “how wisely” represents the man’s view of his own sanity. Yet the act he performs and the reasoning behind his murderous intention convinces the reader that the narrator has lost his sanity. He plots and is driven to kill a man after claiming, “ I loved the old man.

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