ipl-logo

What Is The Black Cat Pluto's Guilt

564 Words3 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe is a man known for his uncomfortable, devious stories of murder, and “The Black Cat” is no exception. This short story portrays how a narrator transforms from a caring husband and pet owner to a fiendish madman. The narrator’s superego, his ego, and his id are completely problematic. The narrator knows that what he did was wrong. This was demonstrated by his guilt and his attempt to contain himself by putting the second cat in the same fate as Pluto. Although, the narrator shows more guilt for the animals then caused harm than his wife, he hangs his first cat Pluto, and he cried when he did this, he felt something for this terrible deed, “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree - hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes” (2). …show more content…

The mental incapacity of the narrator makes his ego a bit skewed . He continued to dictate his rationality of his very little mind, because he did not really suffer from the misconduct that he shown towards Pluto. In the case of the second black cat, the narrator's ego stopped him from harming the black cat :”At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of a former crime,..” (3). It can be said that from that, the way the narrator dealt with the fact of his death from Pluto was by listening to his conscience. Looking at the narrator’s id, he seems When the narrator came back home one night drunk, the cat avoided it. At first, the cat named Pluto was the narrator's

Show More
Related
695 Words | 3 Pages

The cat Pluto was just being it’s own normal self like any other cat but he scratched the narrator and the injustice narrator decided its punishment should be death by hanging from a tree in his property. Erin Morgenstern tells revenge by a conversation with the man in the grey suit and Hector. As the Circus goes on the man in the grey suit approaches Hector and states “An innocent man died here tonight” (Morgenstern 383). Which is true and very wicked for a circus that did not start that way. Things have gotten way out of hand and innocent people are dying left and right, but the show must go on and that is indeed what it does.

Read More
475 Words | 2 Pages

This does not last and in a night of drunken stupor the protagonist maims Pluto, cutting one of his eyes out. In recounting the deed, the narrator himself states, “I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.” The narrators following descriptions of “the poor beast,” contain within them a tone of shame, and in turn illustrate a man ravaged by

Read More
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
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
131 Words | 1 Pages

The narrator initially restrains himself from maltreating the cat while maltreating the other animals because he has compassion for Pluto and becomes fond of him. Pluto would be fed by him and would follow the main character around. As The storyteller explains how as the years go by his friendship with Pluto continues to grow. It is concluded that Pluto and the main character have a special bond. Therefore, the cat is his favorite animal and creature to play with.

Read More
1512 Words | 7 Pages

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.”

Read More
739 Words | 3 Pages

Poe murders the cat, Pluto, and begins to feel guilty for his actions while at a bar. At the bar, the character sees a cat sitting on the shelf with the liquor that “closely resebl[es Pluto] in every respect but one” which then follows him to his car. The character takes the cat home to then realize a mark on its stomach resembling a nuse, how the narrator killed Pluto. Leaving his guilt behind, the cat then goes missing after murdering his wife. When the police show up at his house for an investigation “a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing if a child” comes from the wall where the narrator buried his wife (Poe 5).

Read More
2264 Words | 10 Pages

His conscience convinced him that the policemen knew, he grew stressed and anxious. The narrator felt such agony that confessing was a better outcome than continuing to be tortured (Poe, 619). At last, his own conscience, in the beating sound form, made him yell out the truth and say where the body was. In The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator has little to no morals; he only feels guilt about his first murder, which was his cat named Pluto, but finds some kind of satisfaction in committing

Read More
846 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator got another cat after this and became even more insane in the way he felt about this black cat.

Read More
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
1244 Words | 5 Pages

However, after he hangs Pluto, his house catches on fire the next day, and when he sees the fire he describes it as,”... the figure of a gigantic cat... There was a rope about the animal’s neck”(Giordano). This vision conveys the “otherworldly” and mysterious sense of the story, as it seems that Pluto is haunting the narrator. After the narrator murders Pluto, he decides to get another cat.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

(Poe, the Black Cat) Therefore, the narrator had admire for animals which indeed he had a bunch of them. The narrator had gotten a black cat. “Pluto—this was the cat’s name—was my favorite pet and playmate.” He said. (Poe, the black cat)

Read More
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
447 Words | 2 Pages

I feel that this word is important due to the representation of the cat, appearances in the story, and the overall emphasis of the theme. In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes himself as a docile and a humane disposition. He goes on to state that he feels normal, however, there were certain mental issues that caused an undue effect on others. As the narrator continues his story, he states that he is tormented by his cat Pluto.

Read More
925 Words | 4 Pages

This is important because it is saying that Pluto is saving the other pets from the narrator’s abuse by killing them and punishing the narrator at the same time. After the fire many people gathered around outside of the house and noticed a figure of a cat burned onto the wall. The quotation means that the pets were sort of saved from the abuse with the fire that Pluto started even though they ended up dying The fact that others are there and see these markings prove the narrator is not insane because he is the only person who sees this strange burning on the

Read More

More about What Is The Black Cat Pluto's Guilt

Open Document