The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe Essay - 917 Words

Inescapable Conscious â€Å"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.† - Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe is known for his dark and thought-provoking horror stories. In particular, The Black Cat does just that. The story focuses on the rationalizations of the horrific actions of the narrator. A black cat is introduced to pounce down on the rationalization of the narrator’s actions. Edgar Allan Poe also constructs a story where the main basis of the narrator’s decisions are ethical egoism and the principles of conscience. Poe constructs the black cat as the conscience of the story to depict the guilt of the narrator. This is clearly emphasized when the black cat is in the presence of the narrator, but the consciousness of guilt is also present in the absence of the black cat. The story starts to escalate when the reader begins to feel the irritation of the narrator with everyone around him. In particular, his vexation with his cat, Pluto. It begins with simple enough reasons; the cat becomes too attached for his owners liking. But the story doesn’t truly evolve into the first level of depravity until the narrator, heavily intoxicated, constrains Pluto by the neck and cuts one of his eyes out. At this time, the reader is able to recognize what Poe constructed the ethics of the rationalized actions of the narrator to be: ethical egoism. The narrator thinks of no one but himself. When the narrator continues with his feelings of displeasureShow MoreRelatedThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe1117 Words   |  5 Pages Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator in â€Å"The Black Cat† describes himself as a lover of animals and a man with a kind heart. But he uses his animals and alcoholism as an excuse for his perverse behavior. However, Poe drops hints tho ugh out the narrative to tell a different story. His violence towards animals tells the story of an irrational man who weeps while hanging his cat. Therefore, Poe employs the narrator to show the human tendency to use scapegoats to shift blame for the wrong thing we do. The narratorRead MoreThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe885 Words   |  4 Pagesobserve. An example of these observation and hands on applications would be Edgar Allan Poe, a writer and a poet, whom would be absolutely intrigued in these behaviors. His unique interpretation of the human mind could be seen in â€Å"The Black Cat.† In this short story Edgar Allan Poe embeds himself as the protagonist who are mere victims of the complexities of the mind known as revenge, anger, and perversity. â€Å"The Black Cat† shows the vital side effects of the mind recognized as revenge, anger, andRead MoreThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe1778 Words   |  8 Pagesmonster up within the tomb† (Poe 32). This is the ending of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story â€Å"The Black Cat.† This story is one of the many famous short stories Poe has written in his life time. However, this story, in particular, captivities the horror and frightening works of his display. Having his personal history and short story at hand, will help his audience to understand some of his guilty pleasures. In this Critical Analysis Essay, the composition of â€Å"The Black Cat† will be revealed by connectingRead MoreThe Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe1240 Words   |  5 PagesLiterature, D.H. Lawrence condemns Americans for dodging their true selves by means of intellectualization and idealization. Both Edgar Allan Poe’s short story â€Å"The Black Cat† and Nathaniel Ha wthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† feature allegorical representations of characters deceiving themselves in order to deny the darker aspects of their inner selves. In Poe’s â€Å"The Black Cat,† the narrator denies the darker aspects of his soul by abstracting his horrific actions with spectral evidence in order to externalizeRead MoreThe Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe1900 Words   |  8 Pagesportion of his life writing these kind of stories. Edgar Allan Poe was influenced by his own life experiences, social normalities of the early 19th century, and used literary devices to write horrific works such as The Black Cat, The Raven, and Berenice. Edgar Allan Poe wrote the short story The Black Cat in 1843. The story starts out fairly normal, but very quickly spirals into a horrendous chain of events. The narrator of the story has a cat that he adaores at first, but then he grows irritatedRead MoreThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe Essay1503 Words   |  7 PagesThe Black Cat Gothic Analysis In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story â€Å"The Black Cat† (1843), Poe creates a gothic narrative that exceeds the suspicions of the audiences predeterminations. Throughout the entirety of his piece Poe creates a scene that continuously leaves his readers wondering what was happening next. Suspicion being a key factor in gothic tales is only one strategy Poe used to illuminate the story of an unnamed psychopath and his attempts to either clear his conscious or set the recordRead MoreThe Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe871 Words   |  4 Pages Edgar Allan Poe is a world famous author who writes suspenseful/thriller story that keeps everyone interested. Three of his stories that we have read is â€Å"The Black Cat,† â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart,† â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado†. The five questions that will be discussed is how/why does Poe have his narrator plan the murder of his victim, what is the narrators reason for killing his victim, how does the narrator dispose of the body, does the narrator know the difference between right and wrong, and finallyRead MoreThe Black Cat, By Edgar Allan Poe1202 Words   |  5 PagesEdgar Allan Poe is prominent for his literacy style of horror and mystery, in which he had written an innumerable number of short stories and poems in his lifetime. Evidently, many of his writings like, â€Å"The Black Cat,† â€Å"William Wilson,† and â€Å"The Raven,† share the same style, as their protagonists’ demonstrated a paucity of reliability. Readers often become engaged with how the main character of each text showed their rivulet of tales that seem to be quite fictitious. Available evidence suggestsRead MoreThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe1142 Words   |  5 Pagescharacter survives eight shots to the torso, all happy endings. Edgar Allan Poe isn’t like that. Most of his characters are dark and insane. They have one last shred of sanity then they refuse to keep it and then they end up going insane, much like the characters in The Black Cat, The Raven, and A Tell-Tale Heart. All three the men reach insanity. In The Black Cat a man expresses his passion over all animals. He has a gorgeous black cat named Pluto,his prized possession. Years later this man has aRead MoreThe Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe1243 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"The Black Cat,† Edgar Allan Poe states the nameless narrator is in a prison cell, retelling his story of his struggles from the abuse of alcoholism, perverseness, and animal cruelty. He was married to his beautiful wife and had a variety of pet animals. The narrator starts to talk about his beloved black cat, Pluto, and how he believes it’s evil and the reason for his crazy actions. He came home drunk one day assuming his cat was avoiding him. He tried to grab his cat, but with fear, the cat nipped