What Is The Irony In The Black Cat

“The Black Cat” close reading In Edgard Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”, the concepts of irony, poetic justice, and foreshadowing are demonstrated throughout the brief paragraph describing the last standing wall within the burned down house. First off, the author definitely uses irony at beginning of the passage as the narrator says: “I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect”(Poe, 853). The irony in this sentence emanates from the narrator’s refusal to acknowledge anything supernatural about the fire occurring promptly after his misdeed. While most people would deem karma as a possible cause or influence, he strictly denies that possibility. Nevertheless, he declared being possessed by the fury of a demon antecedently in the story, which is undeniably somewhat supernatural. The main character’s mental incoherence illustrates an ironic change in beliefs; it

Near the end of the paragraph, it is said the narrator “approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat”(Poe 853). The author utilizes thorough imagery to represent the figure of a cat engraved into the wall. This imagery foreshadows two elements of the story. As the black cat motif obviously is not coincidental, it predicts the arrival of a new cat, or arguably the reincarnation of the initial one. It symbolizes the return of the feline and the continuation of the narrator’s problems. In addition, the figure also foreshadows the shorts story’s ending. Indeed, the cat’s portrayal on a strong, solid wall anticipates the outcome of the story where the despised pet ends up in a wall. Likewise it foresees that the cat will eventually lead to the narrator’s downfall. More specifically, he loses the integrity of his possessions, yet the emblematic cat is still standing in the midst of the ruins, equivalently the actual cat ultimately wins in the