Edgar Allan Poe isolated a particular emotion which he sought to produce in his readers. He then constructed his story so that his readers would ultimately arrive at this predetermined feeling or emotion. How does “The Black Cat” exemplify this strategy? Does it do so successfully? Explain.
34 comments:
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story about a man who goes insane because of his alcohol consumption. Throughout the story Poe creates an ultimate feeling of insanity for the reader. Some instances that show this insanity are when the narrator kills his cat, Pluto, and his wife.
An instance of insanity is when the narrator kills his cat. The cat is very affectionate about the narrator and this causes him to go insane. The cat keeps bothering him and the cat’s death seems imminent because the narrator drinks so much.. Finally, the narrator cannot take the cat anymore and maliciously grabs the cat and cuts out one of its eyes. After this the cat’s wound does heal slightly and it continues to bother the narrator. This is what actually causes the death of the cat. The narrator finally cannot take the cat anymore and he hangs it. That is one instance of the felling of insanity.
A final instance of insanity is when the narrator kills his wife. This happens when he is trying to kill the other cat that resembled Pluto. The narrator has an axe and as he was trying to kill the cat his wife steps in front of him. This causes an altercation between him and his wife. This altercation greatly infuriates the narrator and he buries the axe in his wife’s brain. After he does this he realizes he has to hide the body and he buries it in his wall. This shows the insanity Poe created in the narrator throughout the story.
Poe greatly used the feeling of insanity in this story. When he kills his cat he shows that he was an alcoholic and the cat drove him crazy. When he kills his wife it is because he went insane when she tried to stop him from killing his other cat. That is how insanity is used throughout the story.
-Ryan Consentino
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is about the narrator slowly slipping into insanity as he mutilates and kills his cat and is eventually apprehended for the murder of his wife. He begins the story as a normal, loving person. But towards the middle he takes a turn for the worse as he carves his cat Pluto’s eye out and later hangs it on a tree. When he finds a cat that looks just like Pluto, it agitates him to no end. When his anger comes to a boiling point, he tries to kill the cat with an axe. His wife steps in the way to stop him and he buries the axe in her head. He is caught by the police when they find the body in a wall in the basement due to the cries of the cat. This story is meant to disturb and terrify the reader and serve as a window into the mind of an insane individual.
The progression of the narrator’s insanity is one of the most interesting parts of this story. He is described in the beginning as being “noted for the docility and humanity of [his] disposition.” But when he does lose his sanity, he truly takes a turn for the worse. Poe deliberately makes all his acts of violence especially gruesome in an attempt to terrify and disturb the reader. And he does it extremely well. His first sign of madness is when he carves Pluto’s eye out with his penknife. This act was done with rancor only because the cat nipped him when he grabbed it violently. He maliciously hangs the cat by a tree, but interestingly enough, he cries as he does it. It is almost as if he recognizes his own madness but can’t help it. His final act of taking an axe to his wife’s head and hiding her body in a cache in their basement wall is when he completely loses all grip on reality and shows nothing but relief at her death. The most disturbing and terrifying factor of this story is how normal the narrator was when the story began and how uncontrollably mad he became at the end, because it implies that it could happen to the best of us.
Poe’s tale of terror and insanity stands the test of time as a classic horror story. Not many horror stories today are written as eloquently as Poe wrote his. While most horror stories today are basically just mindless violence, Poe connects the mindless violence to true human emotions and feelings. And he does it beautifully. Poe was a master of the short story, and the feelings he tries to convey always come through strong in his writing.
- Ian Mallor
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”, expresses a lot of emotion through action. Such as fear, from what the narrator will do to the cats next. Ambiguity, of why he chooses to kill the cats. “The Black Cat” exemplifies the strategy by gruesome malicious detail Poe gives to the reader. Poe gives great detail making it easier to relate or understand the feeling he trying to get across.
When the narrator maliciously murders the cats and his wife, fear is the dominant feeling. The narrator is very tyrannical about killing his cats. He creates an enigma when he’s thinking one minute he loves them the next he think they’re annoying leaving him with the want to kill them. When he kills his wife, it’s very sudden and unexpected. The wife is very loving of the cat and try’s to protect it, but he is still very angry and decides to just kill her instead.
Poe has a style of writing that is sometimes hard to understand at certain ages, making confusion another key aspect of the story. He confuses the reader about the characters which also enhances the fear in the story. The narrator is said to be a cat loving man but then later on he drastically changes to a mean alcoholic and is killing everyone that annoys him. When the narrator buries his wife in the wall in a little cache, you would think he wouldn’t want people to know about it, but when the cops become suspicious he practically points her out. By telling them to look at the magnificent work he did on the walls.
This story is a good example of predetermined feeling. Poe is a very detailed writer and makes sure the reader knows that. Fear and Ambiguity are relatable feelings that help to understand the story.
Brianne Eagar
In the short story “The Black Cat”, there is a man who has a problem with alcohol and kills his wife and cat. Throughout the story, “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe wants us to feel disgust and fear for what is going to happen. An example of why we feel this way is when he kills his wife, this leaves the reader disturbed.
In the story when he is going to kill his cat but his wife gets in the way of him killing the cat, so he kills his wife leaves a person with disgust. This leaves someone with disgust because of the way he explains him killing the wife. Also this leaves the reader with fear because he is an enigma; the reader can never tell what he is going to do next. An example of this is how he really wanted to kill the cat because it was annoying him but he was tentative to because of what he did to his last cat and he felt bad. Poe wants us to feel disgust and fear for what is going to happen by using his morose style of writing.
Throughout the story Poe tries to use disgust and fear to keep the reader wanting to read more and stay interested. An example of how he uses disgust and fear is when the cat trips him down the stairs; this gives someone fear because someone thinks that he is going to kill the cat. What illustrates disgust is when he kills his wife. All in all, this story tries to leave someone a feeling of disgust and fear.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a brilliant short story, “The Black Cat” that portrays the disturbing, morose life of a young man. The feeling of loss was the ultimate emotion experienced by the reader during this story. The loss of the narrators mind, his cat Pluto, his wife, and the battle between him and his last cat, are all of the losses that the narrator experiences.
The crucial part as to why the man lost his mind was due to his excessive drinking of alcoholic substances, leading to his severe plans of action. Under the influence of alcohol, the man could not stand the affection his cat had towards him. Not being able to handle this, he violently gouges the cat’s eye out, and later hangs him with a noose on the limb of a tree. At first, he felt the loss of no longer having his cat’s love, and he knew that he had just committed a cruel deed. The reader also feels this loss because they know that the man commits the murder because of the spirit of perverseness that possesses his mind. The man had truly lost his mind, causing him to lose the cat that had loved him.
Months following the murder of his cat, the man finds another cat that strangely resembles Pluto. As he brings home the cat he is welcomed by his wife and her automatic love for the new animal. The man is now happy again that he has a cat that loves him, but just like with Pluto, he gets very troubled by this. He has imminent plans to kill this cat. As he tries to do so, his wife gets in the way to stop him because of her benevolent nature of trying to save the cat. The man takes his anger out on his wife instead of the cat, and he ends up killing her with an axe. As he covers up the crime scene he tries to find the cat to finish his plan, but never does. However the cat gives away the location of the wife’s body in the wall to the police, making the man lose the battle he has with the cat. Now the man has lost the only things in his life that loved.
The man has experienced the loss love that he once had within his cat Pluto, his wife, and his last cat. He is now all alone with no one in his life to love him, making the reader experience a tremendous feeling of loss.
Kady Ferguson
English F
“The Black Cat,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story full of insanity and murder. Throughout the story, primary objective of Edgar Allan Poe is to leave the reader frightened and disturbed. He does this in many ways; the first way is the violent deaths that his characters suffer. Another is the addiction to alcohol by the main character. Lastly, the morose descriptions that he uses help add to the story.
Edgar Allan Poe’s stories almost always consist of violence and alcohol. During his time period, not many people appreciate his stories since they were so violent and the characters died in very brutal ways. His stories lead many people to believe that he is mentally insane. In “The Black Cat,” there are multiple examples of violent death. First, Pluto, the cat starts to drive the narrator insane. One day he decides that he can not take it anymore; he grabs the cat and rips out its eye with a pen. The cat lives, and does not stop annoying him. One day he has just had enough, so he hangs the cat. This is the first violent death in this short story. The second occurs when he and his wife are walking down into the basement; when his new cat trips him. After this, his temper snaps and he grabs his axe. Right before he maliciously murders the cat, his wife steps in front of him. This enrages him even more and leads him to bury the axe into her head instead of the cat. During a lot of his stories, there is also a lot of alcohol. Many of his characters including the narrator in “The Black Cat” are gluttons.
Edgar Allan Poe gives amazing descriptions of the deaths that his characters encounter, and also of the thoughts going through the main characters head before and also as he follows through with his actions. In “The Black Cat,” he describes what the narrator is thinking as he rips out Pluto’s eye, and later on as he hangs him. Another time when Poe uses great description is when the narrator violently murders his wife. He describes the axe going into her head as “burying the axe in her brain.”
Edgar Allan Poe uses description, violence, and aslcohol to make his short stories very disturbing and makes the readers think his characters are insane.
Edgar Allan Poe's the "Black Cat" conveys humanities darker side. Poe attempts to convey a felling of horrified curiosity in his reader, which he does sucsessfully.
This story has horrified me and yet brings out a felling of curiosity which can be said and ironicly so "curiosity killed the cat". The pet cat originally bought by his wife by the name of Pluto loved his owner and in return the cat was shown affection so why in a fit of rage would he kill his loving companion. But later on he finds a cat similar to Pluto in every way except for a white stripe wich he later relizes are marks from the ropes of the gallows, in the beggining he states the old superstition thar black cats are just witches in disguise, and ways of executing witches involved both the infamous gallows and burning. Both are ways the cat Pluto was killed. The idea that Pluto has been resurected from the dead or has used parrelnormal methods to escape death. From Poe's life story the cat would probably be looking for revenge scares me because while immortsality is a pleasent thought the idead of resserection from the dead is frightining.
All throughout this story the reader must feel a felling of horrified curiosity throughout the narrative of sorts. He has endureds to this day because all of our crime dramas are based upun the foundation that he and other great writers before him have laid down before us.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the short story the “The Black Cat” which is about a drunken man who made a lot of mistakes out of anger. When Poe gets angry he drinks which ends up getting him even angrier. Then he makes irrational decisions then regrets them in the long run. Throughout the short story Poe successfully brings out the anger in the reader.
Edgar Allan Poe goes through several obstacles throughout the short story which results in tragedies. The Black Cat is about a guy who marries very young that gets a couple of pets. He gets this one black cat that he names Pluto. Pluto and him have a very special bond that they only share. They both love each other very much. But one big problem is that the guy drinks excessively. When he drinks he gets very angry and makes rash decisions that he later regrets. The guy rubs off on Pluto his drunkenness and anger so the cat bites him in the hand. After that he takes his pen knife out of his pocket and carves Pluto’s eye out in anger. After that he feels guilty and bad for the cat so he wants to take Pluto out of his anguish so he hangs Pluto. When Pluto dies the house catches on fire. So then after that tragedy he sees another cat that looks and acts exactly like Pluto except the breast of the new cat is white and Pluto did not have a white spot. The cat just gets the man angrier and angrier because it reminds him of Pluto and what he did. So he wants to kill the new cat. He and his wife walk down to the basement and the new cat follows them. He takes the axe and goes to chop the head off but his wife grabs his hand. He gets so angry at his wife that he takes the axe and thrusts the axe into her head. After that he gets frantic and does not know what to do with her body so he puts her into the wall. Then four days after the police come and searched then he knocks on the wall and they hear a noise. It was the cat in the wall and they found his wife’s body.
Throughout the short story Poe successfully brings out the anger in the reader. When I read this I felt angry because he killed his cat and wife straight out of anger. He did not need to do that he just had to take a deep breath and relax but he could not calm his anger down so he killed. Also he drank so that heightened his anger even more. Edgar Allan Poe was an excellent writer because he decided before he wrote what he wanted the audience to feel and he accomplished that in many of his stories especially “The Black Cat”.
-Cassie Scanlan
Period F
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is about a mentally ill man who loves his cat very much, but ultimately ends up committing murders. Throughout the whole story, Poe promotes anger into the reader. Poe promotes anger into his audience through the action of murder and death.
Poe angers his audience in “The Black Cat” by making the narrator a confused, mentally ill character. Throughout the story, the narrator has very violent thoughts and actions against the black cat, named Pluto. The narrator commits violent actions against the cat, including ripping the cat’s eye out, after coming home one night intoxicated, and hanging the cat to death, and ultimately ends up being thrown into the fire by the narrator, to prevent from anyone knowing what he had done. Pluto was very peaceful cat that did not disturb the narrator at all. The narrator loved animals, but he always wanted to kill the cat, no matter how much he loved it. This shows that the narrator is obviously not in good health and has a problem. However, his problems only continued when he adopted a new cat. This cat was very much like Pluto, as they were both missing an eye, but the one noticeably difference about them was the white spot on the cat. The cat immediately loved the narrator’s wife, but he could not deal with the cat anymore. The narrator had the same affection for this cat, but he had the craving of wanting to kill the black cat. One day, he had tried to kill the cat with an axe, however, his wife stopped him, and then he ultimately kills his wife. He then seals his wife up into the wall and the cat too. However, he did not notice that he had sealed the cat up as well. When the cops had come, the cat revealed the hiding spot. These events make the reader very made because he had killed the only people and animals that had loved him.
Poe promotes anger into his audience through the action of murder and death. The murders of Pluto and the adopted cat, as well as his wife, promoted an undefined amount of anger into his readers. Even though continued to make up stories with the particularly the same theme, Poe continues to dazzle his readers with amazing stories.
Panos N.
Brianna Rogers
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”, a man driven to insanity ends up committing murders. Throughout this short story Poe successfully brings out the feeling of being disturbed in the readers. The readers have this feeling continuously throughout the story in the result of deaths.
For example, one will get the feeling of being disturbed when the man kills the cat. At first he doesn’t seem to have any sympathy for the cat and thinks it is annoying. The quote, “I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree,” helps us feel disturbed. He does this out of anger, but once it is over he knows what he did was wrong. Soon after there is another cat that appears in the mans life. This cat also ends up frustrating him. For example, “I aimed a blow at the animal, which of course, would have proved instantly fatal has descended as I wished.” This is saying he intended to kill the cat. When his plan doesn’t succeed, the axe kills his wife. The disturbing part of the killing of his wife is that at first it didn’t seem to bother him. He carefully thought about where he would hide the body. Most people would be in shock unlike the man which he made this clear to disturb people as they read.
Throughout the story Poe successfully brought out the feeling of being disturbed in the readers. Poe was very advanced for his time which had an effect on shows and stories today. Some may say that he had a twisted mind, but we wouldn’t have had the ideas that Poe thought of. This story helped us understand why we would follow through with things that we know is wrong.
Amanda Murphy
Period D
December 11, 2008
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Black Cat, is about a man impelled to insanity commits a horrendous crime. In this short story, Poe successfully makes the readers feel awkward. The readers feel awkward because Poe writes in a very disturbing, confusing way.
Poe’s narrator comes home intoxicated one night which leads to the narrator cutting his cat’s eye out of his socket. After this happened, a few morning later, the narrator hangs the cat. “One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;- hung it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my hear;” This quote makes one feel awkward because one doesn’t know what to think when one hears this. The narrator had the evil intention to kill his loving cat, but he killed it with tears streaming from his eyes. The narrator is clearly crazy. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing in general makes readers feel awkward. The writing itself is hard to comprehend let alone the way the narrator is crazy. Readers feel awkward because they don’t know what to make of the narrator and Poe’s writing.
Edgar Allan Poe makes his readers feel awkward while the read his short story, The Black Cat, mostly by his writing. Today, Poe continues to interest his readers with his imagination.
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe empathizes feelings of conflict. Thought the short story Poe successful evokes feelings of conflict within the reader. Poe’s narrator is traveling down a slippery slope to hell which leads us to follow his tragic path to damnation.
Poe uses the basic concept of conflict and confliction to full effect in “The Black Cat” by adding many immensely conflicting emotions: “Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair or spring upon my knees, covering me with it’s loathsome caresses.” Poe creates even more conflictions of thought when his character says: “The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me little.” after killing his wife. Poe creates one of the final main conflictions of feeling in his characters final lines: “with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!” The character had killed his wife for nothing but he felt guilty and was not at the same time!
Thought the short story Poe successful evokes the feelings of conflict in the reader. Poe masterfully caused so much conflict of feeling within the story, so many paradoxes, that the reader does not know what to feel. Edger Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” had no real ending since the reader still does not know what to think.
Essay by Bradley Jones
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a short story about a character that has many pets and his favorite, a black cat eventually drives him to insanity. Throughout the short story Poe successfully evoked the idea of anger in the reader. He successfully gets the reader to feel anger with a series of events that lead up to murder.
The character in “The Black Cat” has many pets, and married young. His favorite pet was a black cat which he loved dearly. He was known to be an alcoholic and have violent confrontations with his wife. Eventually he came home intoxicated and grabbed the cat; it bit him so he cut its eye out. This is intended to anger the reader; he loves the cat and yet he attacks it. He causes it great harm for a reason that is not just. This angers the reader.
Another reason to how Poe angers his readers is when he states the fact that the character knows his actions are perverse; but he still continues to cause it harm. He knows that he shouldn’t hurt the cat, because it is his favorite and does not deserve this treatment. However this drives him to his madness, he knows its wrong; this is what gives him the thrill. So he hangs the cat on a branch until it appears to be dead. This with out a doubt is devised to angers the reader.
A final reason to how Poe angers the reader is his last attempt at the cat. He has since found another cat; that remarkably resembles the previous cat Pluto. The cat shows affection to him when he is near; just as the previous one did. However his lust for doing what is wrong is to great; he gets an ax and just as he is about to kill the cat. His wife gets involved; she grabs the ax and in the confusion and rage; is struck in the head and dies. This is designed to anger the reader; he kills his wife in the struggle to end the cat. This is the climax; his wife dead. He doesn’t remorse; this angers the reader tremendously. The does not feel remorse; he thinks about how he will hide the body. When the cops come he almost brags by pointing at the wall where the wife is hidden. This angers the reader because it appears as though he will get away with the murder. Then, the cat is in the wall; the wall destroyed and the body found.
These reasons were designed to make the reader angry. It angers the reader because the cat does not deserve this. Also, he knows that is wrong; but he continues to harm the cat. It angers the reader that the wife is killed over his lust for committing evil, acts. Poe successes his goal of maker the reader feel anger; it is this goal that makes his story still known; it keeps the readers interested in the “The Black Cat”
Anthony Berardi
In Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Black Cat,” a man went insane and started to kill. Throughout the short story, Poe successfully evoked the feeling of being disturbed. Most of the images he gets is murder.
In the beginning of The Black Cat, the story talks about how he loves pets and have lots of them. He has a bird, gold-fish, small monkey, fine dog and a cat. His favorite is the cat. The name of the cat is Pluto. He loves it and it loves him. One night Pluto possessed him. After that he cuts one of the cat’s eye out of the socket! We don’t know why he did it. He loves the cat and the cat loves him. After he took the cat and hung it on the tree. “He hung it because he knew that it once loved, no reason of offence, committing a sin-jeopardize my immortal soul.” He destroyed the beast. He loved his wife dearly. One night, “he grabbed an axe and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead without a groan.” He killed his wife and he had to dig a grave for it. He deposited the body against the inner wall! Her grave was inside the wall. He made the readers think that this is a disturbed feeling.
All the reasons are the feeling disturbed because the reasons are not happy or joyful. This story was fearful and feeling disturbed. He killed his wife and his cat! He disturbed
everything he killed.
kim lynch
Class-D
Edgar Allen Poe was a writer who got his feelings out in his poems and short stories. Within most of his pieces of writing was a sense of insanity and disturbance. “The Black Cat” was one of his short stories about a mad-man who commits murder, and has an uncontained love for his cat. Throughout the story, Poe successfully focuses on the fact of love, but temptations cause people to do the unthinkable.
First of all, the narrator tells his audience about his love for animals. He also married early, and says, “And was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.” They both liked animals and had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. The narrator’s cat, Pluto, was a beautiful all black cat that he loved very much. But the narrator had a darker side to him. He was violent, most likely caused by his addiction to alcohol. The cat became older and more an annoyance to him, but he loved the cat. But with the alcohol, he started to become a mad-man.
Secondly, one night while the narrator came staggering home, “much intoxicated”, as he states it, he says that the cat did not notice his presence. He then seized the cat. The cat tried to get away by prying his sharp teeth into the man’s hand. The demon within the drunken monster was awakened. He reached for his coat pocket to pull out a penknife. The narrator then cut one of the cat’s eyes from the socket. After that the man went back to his drinking to then fall asleep into the night. Then to be feared by his cat at the wake of dawn when he arose.
Thirdly, after the intoxicated night the narrator felt bad for what he had done. Once the cat saw him he fled. The man loved his cat, but the demons within him took over and posed him to do such a thing. These impulses to humans are natural. People do what they are not supposed to do. Then the man does the unthinkable, and hangs and infatuates the cat in flames resulting in the cat’s death. Later the narrator does yet again posses an impulse for him to murder his wife. He then thought to himself where to hide the body. The neighbors could not find out or the police. He goes to his cellar to find view his walls. The walls were already in bad condition. They were old and damp. This was the perfect place to hide the evidence.
Even though he loved his things near and dear to him, impulses cause people to do things that are not logical. Temptations are something that lurks within us, and can never be avoided. The demons within everyone of us one day are released. Which like the narrator caused him to go insane kill his cat and his beloved wife.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, A man who is going insane because of his growing drinking problem murders his cat and his wife. Thought the story Poe successfully invoked feelings of confusion and fear. He is constantly talking about how much he and the cat love each other, but yet he decides to carve the cats’ eye out and later hang it. Then later after his house is burnt down and has found a new cat to love, who is almost exactly like the old one except for a white mark on its breast, he still finds himself hating the cat and trying to kill it as well. And in the process of his second murder attempt he ends up killing his wife by accident.
Poe uses confusion in his story to make the reader want to keep reading to see if it gets any clearer. He uses confusion in the part of his story where there is a figure of a cat on the lonely wall of his house after the fire. He doesn’t make it completely clear to the reader if it is a real cat or the imprint of one on the wall.
He uses fear in his story to emphasize the confusion he incorporated in to it. He uses fear when he is talking about killing the cat for the first time and then when he attempts to kill it the second time but kills his wife on accident. The fear is not really his fear but a way of making the reader feel scared of what might happen next, almost like foreshadowing.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Black Cat and wrote it in a way that confused and scared the reader, but also made the reader think and wonder about Poe himself. He incorporated confusion and fear into his story in an effective way, by making the reader want more.
-Lindsay Garrone
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” depicts the solemn tale of an insane alcoholic who murders his cat and wife. As Poe wrote his story, he sought to disturb his audience and causes them to feel horror and fear.
While writing, Poe tries to create descriptions and scenes which will cause the audience to become very disturbed and afraid. In one scene, the narrator loses all sanity and feels strong rancor to the cat as he gouges out its eye. In writing about this, Poe is aware that his reader will be quite disturbed. Later in the story, the narrator says that the cat “exasperated me to madness.” This scares the audience as they wonder what he will do. He then throws an axe which hits his wife, which also causes the audience to feel horror. Another instance in which Poe causes disturbance is when the narrator stashes his dead wife’s corpse in a cache. The image of a dead body stuffed inside a wall causes the reader to cringe. Also, when the body is found by the police, Poe describes the body as “greatly decayed and clotted with gore.” These words have a very disturbing connotation. Throughout his whole writing process, Poe causes many feelings of horror and disturbance.
Many of Poe’s writings are very disturbing and fearful. Many times his writing reflects upon himself, in the sense that he was an insane glutton for alcohol. This attributes to the emotions that you feel upon reading his ridiculous short stories.
-Taryn Kitchen
Gary Portway
Period F English
The Black Cat short essay
In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, Poe focuses on showing the narrator’s insanity by using contrast in his daily life. The narrator lives a very normal life style with his wife and his pet black cat named Pluto. The narrator speaks very highly of Pluto and shows a very strong master-pet relationship. However, as Pluto becomes too affectionate, to a point where it is simply annoying to the narrator. Big deal? Indeed. The narrator often finds himself drinking the night away in lonesome. When he drinks, the narrator finds his patience to be abstract and his temper to have a tyrannical structure.
As the story progresses, Pluto becomes attached to the narrator to a point where even a concise encounter would lead to a berserk rant from the narrator. However, at first Poe shows this relationship as “cute and loving” until Pluto becomes ridiculously attached to his master that it is no longer “cute” but it is just aggravating to him. This warped relationship gets to a point where the narrator decides to kill Pluto. At this point of the continuing altercation, Poe shows the narrator losing all eminence of a human being and uses a penknife to cut out Pluto’s eye then hangs him in his garden. As time passes, the narrator recalls the past event and realizes that he was so angered that he seemed more like a demon than a human. What is to remember about this is how when the narrator was “sober”, the cat “severely annoyed him” but when he was drunk, the hate for the cat was taken beyond emotions and resulted in the cats death. At this point in the story, Poe makes the readers think that the narrator has a “drinking problem” rather than being “insane”. When this concept changes, it is caused by yet, another cat. The narrator finds another cat wandering around and eventually decides to keep it (even though it mainly reminds him of Pluto). Déjà vu was it not? This cat soon seems to be a reincarnation of Pluto and starts to irritate the narrator. Seeing how this is the second time, the narrator has trouble putting up with the cat’s “love” and after a drink or too – another altercation takes place. The narrator heads downstairs with his wife when the cat “trips” the narrator, in resulted anger, the narrator picks up and axe and is about to kill the cat when his wife interferes and stops him. Ahh, this is the point where Poe decided to change the narrator from an “alcoholic” to a “madman”. Instead of stopping this rage, the narrator picks up the axe and brutally kills his wife by putting the axe vertically through her head. The man then decides to make a cashe in the wall for the body. As days progress, the cat disappears and the body remains in the wall, until the local police show up. The narrator show’s his insanity once again as he leads the police to search the walls with his wife in them. No noise is made, there’s a dead body in the wall, and nothing can make noise - until the cat reveals its location (in the wall with the body and starts making noises).
The narrator has been depicted by Poe as a raging alcoholic who lost all touch with his normal lifestyle due to the insanity that the “too-affectionate” cat caused him. In Eagar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, Poe shows that too much of something can mean the opposite. Poe also references the narrator being drunk a lot, sort of like [Poe] in real life. Poe also show’s how deadly being addicted to drinking can be, it can cause somebody to lose they’re “touch” of being a human being. What really made the narrator snap was the verity that alcohol helped create the narrators anger, but insanity was what drove him to kill.
Meagan Elliott
12/1/08
Period E
“The Black Cat” Essay
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” depicts a story of an alcoholic who becomes disturbed over two cats’ affection and murders them, along with his wife. Poe’s main objective in writing this story is to inflict confusion in such a way that it will disturb his audience. The ideas that show this confusion are the man’s sanity, the two cats, and the man’s wife.
In “The Black Cat”, Poe refers to the sanity of the man to diminish as the story progresses. At the beginning of the story, the man is very sagacious and gentle. He has a heart for all animals. He marries his wife, who is in love with animals just as much as he does. They have birds, gold-fish, a cog, rabbits, a monkey, and a cat. But, this cat is very special. His name is Pluto and is fat, black, and has a very high affection for the man. At first, the man enjoys this affection very much. The cat follows him around everywhere and sits in his lap. However, over time, the demeanor of the man changes drastically. He becomes an alcoholic and malicious. He beats his animals and his wife. The affection from the cat, becomes too much for him. He almost becomes insane; thinking of things that are disturbing in a way. For example, he thinks of how he feels he must do something because he knows it is wrong. He starts to see the cat on the wall. He sees figures from the Gallows on this new cat that he gets. He can’t stand to have the affection from anyone or anything. He gets a guilty conscious and does horrible things because of it. He doesn’t know what to do but to get rid of the problem in front of him immediately. He acts out of anger.
The two cats that the man has brings upon the man’s loss of his mind. The first cat he has loves him very much. But, the affection becomes too much for him. He becomes aloof towards it. But, he soon can’t stand it around anymore and hangs it. He later stumbles upon a new cat that resembles his old cat with a white spot. He enjoys having him around at first, but soon has an altercation with it. He is going down the stairs with his wife and the cat trips him. He becomes enraged and grabs an ax to kill it. But, his wife stops him. It is confusing and disturbing because all he wants to do is kill the cats because they love him. Why? They have done nothing wrong to him.
During the altercation with the second cat, a horrid thing occurs between the man and his wife. Instead of killing the cat, the man kills his wife because she stepped in his way of killing the cat. That brings upon moiré confusion because she had done nothing wrong to him. And he enjoyed killing her in a sense. Again, why? Then the man buries her in the wall and after four days, he notices that the cat is gone. The police come and he gets cocky. He says how wonderful the walls are constructed.. But, then a noise comes from inside the wall. The police open it up and find the wife and the cat. And that is where the beginning of the story comes from.
In conclusion, Poe develops a character with a disturbing mind. He writes of this man who soon becomes unstable. He cannot handle anything, not even love. And he kills because of it. He hears and sees things that aren’t there and he can’t control it. Poe does successfully confuse his audience to disturb them. The reader is confused on why the man becomes the way he is. And why he kills the loving cats and his loving wife. And when this occurs, Poe writes the event in a creepy way that becomes disturbing. Why is all the reader can say.
Kolin Campbell
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” shows the reactions of an alcoholic to small disturbances, and how these disturbances can cause an enormous problem. Poe wants the readers to experience the feeling of surprise throughout this short story. He effectively succeeds this goal, as the story is not predictable.
At the beginning of “The Black Cat,” the narrator is described with a benevolent personality toward animals and his wife which gave a peaceful feel to the story, but by the conclusion, the narrator faced malicious thoughts. The narrator states his emotions toward animals in the beginning, saying “To those of who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable.” Edgar Allan Poe starts off telling the reader how the narrator loves animals. By the end, after alcohol changes the thoughts of the narrator, these feelings of love are not as strong. Now the feeling of annoyance appears in the mind. This story shows the change from a character full of affection to a character who only thinks morosely.
The narrator’s gradual descent into madness keeps the readier guessing at the end of every period. Poe effectively uses the feeling of surprise to build up the dramatic conclusion.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story of fear, remorse, and insanity. Poe’s intention was the reader to feel these emotions, as it was his style of writing where he predestined the readers’ emotions and constructed his story around that goal.
Poe uses fear as a main emotion for which the reader will experience. He optimizes this by provoking though churning ideas in an abstract manner. The ideas are equally violent as well as abstract. This, combined with his style of writing makes fear a prominent entity. The part of the plot that evokes fear is the uncertainty of the mind and wellness of the main character, such as in the narrator in “The Black Cat”. The narrator is shown as becoming a hostile figure, making his actions indecisive and foreign to his previous character. And this with the resolution of the story makes the reader think of how distorted the narrator’s mind is. The idea of walling up a deceased loved one with an avatar of a cat that was killed by one’s very own hand will be a basis for fear in the reader. Remorse is also an emotion that Edgar wants the reader to feel. It is an unfamiliar feeling with Poe’s works but that is what is ultimately felt when the narrator first gouges out the cat’s eye, then hanging it in the garden of his home. He articulately describes the scenes, cleverly constructing the story in the beginning to construct a strong bond between the narrator and the first cat, only to rip it apart thereafter. That with the final act of taking the life of his best friend effectively executes the emotion. The feeling of insanity in the story is analogous with his downfall from his previous persona of care and love to violence and lack of temperament. With his writing style, is creates a surreal environment and one that distorts reality. It seems that everything is in a dream, especially when he commits the heinous acts of violence and intolerance towards the first cat and his very own wife. The reincarnate of the first cat also creates a sense of disproportion in that it is exactly like the first cat and loves him all the same.
Edgar intends for the reader to feel fear, remorse and insanity in the reader and effectively does so through his “predestining” style and the construction of the plot.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a first person narrative short story of loss and fear in a man’s life. Throughout the story, Poe’s biggest objective is to create a disturbing effect on the reader. In the story, the narrator is driven to madness and later murder.
In the beginning of the story the man owns many animals, but has more affection for his black cat. He later gets annoyed with the cat continuously following him around. To stop this, he comes home one night intoxicated from drinking too much and has had enough of his cat. The man’s face, along with his demeanor, turns mad and he decides to stop this by holding the cat by its throat and cutting out its eye. The cat later recovers but still shows signs of hurt. This causes the man to feel bad for the cat and he decides to “do the right thing” even though he knows it’s not, by hanging the cat in their family garden.
The whole situation of the first cat made the man feel bad, but his spirits rise as he saw a cat that looked exactly like Pluto, his cat while walking. He brings the cat home with him and he falls in love with it as much as he did with Pluto. Even though this would be a good thing, this makes the man mad because again the cat starts continuously following him around wherever he goes. One day while his wife and he are walking down the stairs the cat trips him. This makes the man angry and he goes to get an axe to kill the cat. The wife didn’t let this happen and stepped in the way. This caused an altercation and the man hits his wife with the axe instead of the cat. He hides his wife in a cache so if anyone was to look for her they would never find her.
The wrapping together of all of these problems causes the reader to feel a disturbed emotion.
Kim Schubert
12/11/08
English F
Tyler Durocher
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” describes the influence of alcohol on the narrator which leads to perverse actions. Throughout the story, Poe’s main objective is to create a feeling of insanity for the reader. Several events create the feeling of insanity such as killing of his wife and the killing of his cat.
Events in the story such as the killings of the narrator’s cat and wife create a feeling of insanity for the reader. The killing of his wife demonstrates the insanity of the story . For example, when the cat tripped the narrator down the stairs, he went insane. He grabbed an axe and went after the cat. When he did so his wife stepped in the way of the axe and stopped him. This altercation between him and his wife greatly enrages him into burying the axe into his wife’s head. This shows that the narrator had gone so insane that he became oblivious to his love for his wife and killed her. Another way that Poe creates a feeling of insanity is the killing of the narrators cat, Pluto. The narrator becomes slowly annoyed by Pluto because Pluto has become very attached to him. The demeanor of the cat influences the narrator to become annoyed with every little thing the cat does. This influences the author to perform malicious acts towards the cat. For example, When the narrator comes home one day the cat trips him. This enrages the narrator and he goes insane and gauges the cats eye out. This shows that in the narrators insanity he forgets his love for the cat and abuse it. That is how Poe creates a feeling of insantity in “The Black Cat”.
In the story “The Black Cat”,Edgar Allan Poe creates a feeling of insanity for his reader. Poe creates a feeling of insanity for his reader by using actions such as the killings of the narrators wife an cat. “The Black Cat”, is highly acknowledged because it demonstrates Poe’s writing style.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” the narrator, an insane alcoholic, kills his wife and hang his most beloved cat. Poe’s primary objective is to evoke a feeling of horror and insanity. Poe uses words throughout the story so by the end you arrive at these predetermined feelings.
By the end of the book the reader is horrified and disturbed by the horrible actions taken by the narrator. Poe has decided that the reader would arrive at these feelings by the end of the book. Poe uses these feeling and writes the story around them. The narrator informs the reader in the begging of the book that he will die tomorrow which foreshadows that the narrator will commit a crime punishable by death. Because the narrator is an alcoholic he has sporadic outbursts of violence which he inflicts upon his pets. These outbursts of anger eventually lead him to commit the deathly crime, the murder of his wife. Poe leads up to this murder with the hanging of his first cat Pluto. The hanging of Pluto makes it clear to the reader how disturbed the narrator is which sets up the rest of the story. The factor that makes the narrator eventually fall into insanity is his second cat which greatly resembles Pluto. Even though this cat has great affection for him the narrator tries to alienate it.
In Poe’s writing it is clear that he has mastered the skill of evoking specific feelings in the reader. Writers of the years still look to Poe’s work as the original horror stories. This story of an insane man and the unethical killings of his wife and pets will be classic horror story for centuries to come.
Brian bostwick
In the story The Black Cat, Edgar Allen Poe writes a story about an insane man who loves his cat. Throughout the story Edgar Allen Poe successfully provokes the reader to feel sad and disgusted. Sad because of what he does to the things he loves and disgusted with the acts of violence he commits.
When I read the prompt I felt very sad. I felt sad because he kills the cat who did nothing wrong. Another example is when the man tries to kill the second cat but the wife stops him and then he kills her. Poe also wants the reader to feel disgusted. He uses descriptive imagery to make the reader picture the acts of violence. An example is when the cat gets it’s eye cut out. “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat and deliberately cut one of it’s eyes from the socket!” This quote gives me a graphic image of a knife aggressively cutting an eye out of a cat.
Other people might feel differently when they read this prompt, but I believe Poe was trying to make the reader fell sad and disgusted. All in all that is how I feel when I read The Black Cat.
Alex Devolve
In the story The Black Cat, Edgar Allen Poe writes a story about an insane man who loves his cat. Throughout the story Edgar Allen Poe successfully provokes the reader to feel sad and disgusted. Sad because of what he does to the things he loves and disgusted with the acts of violence he commits.
When I read the prompt I felt very sad. I felt sad because he kills the cat who did nothing wrong. Another example is when the man tries to kill the second cat but the wife stops him and then he kills her. Poe also wants the reader to feel disgusted. He uses descriptive imagery to make the reader picture the acts of violence. An example is when the cat gets it’s eye cut out. “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat and deliberately cut one of it’s eyes from the socket!” This quote gives me a graphic image of a knife aggressively cutting an eye out of a cat.
Other people might feel differently when they read this prompt, but I believe Poe was trying to make the reader fell sad and disgusted. All in all that is how I feel when I read The Black Cat.
Cameron Hale
12/11/08
Insanity in “The Black Cat”
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a sick and twisted short story about a psychotic alcoholic’s attachment to his cats. Throughout this story, Poe uses imagery to display his acts of insanity within the narrator and Poe himself. Insanity in his descriptive and impulsive deaths, insanity in the sudden flash of rage resulting in the killing of his wife, and insanity in the surge of cockiness during the ending of the story.
The first example of Poe’s obvious insanity during this novella comes with his impulsive deaths, mainly with Pluto who is the narrator’s cat. The narrator had a loving friendship with his cat, and so did the narrator’s wife. Both he and she favored the cat over the many other pets there were in the household. As time went on, the narrator states that he has an abrupt change in his temperament, becoming moodier and oblivious to the feelings of others. All of these changes were mainly due to fact that the narrator was an alcoholic. This too can add to Poe and the narrator’s apparent insanity. One night the narrator comes home intoxicated, thus resulting in his flash of rage with the cat; later leading to the narrator gouging Pluto’s eye out with a pen. Later in the story Poe writes that the narrator hangs the cat. Poe constantly is writing about gruesome and things that would appear disturbing to the reader. Also in this novella, Poe writes about how the impulsively decides to kill his wife while attempting to kill the second cat. This quick and radical decision is another fact on how Edgar Allan Poe and the narrator display insanity and rancor in this morose story. The final example on how Poe and the narrator are insane throughout this tale is because of the narrators decision to practically give himself up at the end. The narrator becomes extremely cocky and talks about the stableness of the walls. This surge of cockiness proves that only an insane person would decide to do such a radical thing by giving them self up with malicious intent.
All in all this story was about an ill-minded man and his attachment to cats. Poe and the narrator prove there insanity throughout this novella by killing his cats, killing his wife, and giving himself up in the end. Poe’s the “The Black Cat” is written and narrated both by insane people.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a short story about a man who commits a malicious act of murder upon his cat, Pluto, and his wife. Throughout the story Poe’s main objective is to inspire fear in the reader.
During this story the man’s love for his cat eventually turns to rancor. Pluto loves the man so much and the cat loves him too. It follows the man around everywhere. But soon the love of the cat annoys the man, who is a glutton when it comes to alcohol. One night, in a drunken rage, the man gets so annoyed with Pluto that he grabs it by its throat and pens out the cat’s eye. Once it has recovered from its loss the alcoholic hangs it from a tree. These volatile acts strike fear in the reader, just as Poe wants.
But that isn’t all that the man does to make the reader feel fearful. Soon after he finds another cat, also missing an eye like Pluto and the same thing happens. The new cat and the man love one another very much, but the love of the cat once again turns the man insane. He tries to slaughter the cat with axe after it tripped while going downstairs. His wife steps in the way so he murders her because of her interference. He slams the axe into her head. He hides the body in a cache in the wall. The man finds no trace of the cat once he hides the body in the wall. The cops come to the house and to investigate. The story ends with the man getting too cocky and knocking on the wall. The cat makes a sound from behind the wall and the police discover the body of the dead wife.
This solemn story gives off a fearful emotion throughout the entire story due to the man’s insanity.
*Samantha Gaglio
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story of fear, remorse, and insanity. Poe’s intention was the reader to feel these emotions, as it was his style of writing where he predestined the readers’ emotions and constructed his story around that goal.
Poe uses fear as a main emotion for which the reader will experience. He optimizes this by provoking though churning ideas in an abstract manner. The ideas are equally violent as well as abstract. This, combined with his style of writing makes fear a prominent entity. The part of the plot that evokes fear is the uncertainty of the mind and wellness of the main character, such as in the narrator in “The Black Cat”. The narrator is shown as becoming a hostile figure, making his actions indecisive and foreign to his previous character. And this with the resolution of the story makes the reader think of how distorted the narrator’s mind is. The idea of walling up a deceased loved one with an avatar of a cat that was killed by one’s very own hand will be a basis for fear in the reader. Remorse is also an emotion that Edgar wants the reader to feel. It is an unfamiliar feeling with Poe’s works but that is what is ultimately felt when the narrator first gouges out the cat’s eye, then hanging it in the garden of his home. He articulately describes the scenes, cleverly constructing the story in the beginning to construct a strong bond between the narrator and the first cat, only to rip it apart thereafter. That with the final act of taking the life of his best friend effectively executes the emotion. The feeling of insanity in the story is analogous with his downfall from his previous persona of care and love to violence and lack of temperament. With his writing style, is creates a surreal environment and one that distorts reality. It seems that everything is in a dream, especially when he commits the heinous acts of violence and intolerance towards the first cat and his very own wife. The reincarnate of the first cat also creates a sense of disproportion in that it is exactly like the first cat and loves him all the same.
Edgar intends for the reader to feel fear, remorse and insanity in the reader and effectively does so through his “predestining” style and the construction of the plot.
Peter Le
In the short story “The Black Cat”, there is a man who has a problem with alcohol and kills his wife and cat. Throughout the story, “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe wants us to feel disgust and fear for what is going to happen. An example of why we feel this way is when he kills his wife, this leaves the reader disturbed.
In the story when he is going to kill his cat but his wife gets in the way of him killing the cat, so he kills his wife leaves a person with disgust. This leaves someone with disgust because of the way he explains him killing the wife. Also this leaves the reader with fear because he is an enigma; the reader can never tell what he is going to do next. An example of this is how he really wanted to kill the cat because it was annoying him but he was tentative to because of what he did to his last cat and he felt bad. Poe wants us to feel disgust and fear for what is going to happen by using his morose style of writing.
Throughout the story Poe tries to use disgust and fear to keep the reader wanting to read more and stay interested. An example of how he uses disgust and fear is when the cat trips him down the stairs; this gives someone fear because someone thinks that he is going to kill the cat. What illustrates disgust is when he kills his wife. All in all, this story tries to leave someone a feeling of disgust and fear.
-Matt Pelletier
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story about a borderline insane man whose own emotions and alcohol problems ultimately cause him to lose control of himself, commit several heinous and malicious acts of violence hatred. The narrator loves pets; he and his wife have many. Although he loves all his animals, the narrator is most partial to a black cat named Pluto. But, the narrator begins to change. His mind poisoned by alcohol, he ultimately loses control of himself and commits several heinous acts of violence and hatred. In “The Black Cat,” Poe’s primary objective is to disturb the reader through the actions of the narrator.
There are several examples of Poe’s effort to disturb the reader. First, Early in the story, one may notice that the narrator’s thought process changes rapidly but does not follow a linear pattern. This variety of thinking may is not commonly found in today’s society, therefore one may find it to be disturbing; humans that anything do not understand to be strange or disturbing. Next, the narrator is driven to brutal violence towards his pets and his wife. He resents the behavior of the latter, and slowly becomes angry at his companions and wife. The narrator, in a drunken stupor, cuts the eye out of Pluto. Later, he hangs the cat. Later, he comes upon another cat, whose features resemble Pluto’s. Although he befriends the cat, he is driven insane by the memory of Pluto. Therefore, he chooses to take out his resentment on the cat and his wife. The cat annoys him further, and fills him with rancor. He attempts to kill the cat, but his wife interferes. . In a blind rage, he kills his wife, and the cat “escapes.” Although the narrator thought he would get away with his crime; it was only imminent that he was to be found out. The moaning of the cat within the walls was likely the most disturbing portion of the story.
These actions are found to be very disturbing to the reader. Finally, Poe focuses on disturbing the reader by causing the narrator mind to become filled with remorse and agony. His conscience is nagging at him because of the acts he committed. When the narrator’s house burns down, there is an imprint of the cat on the wall. When he finds the second cat, it seems to be missing and eye, and has markings that bear the silhouette of gallows. There is a degree of mystery to these occurrences, and makes the reader wonder whether or not the narrator is actually imagining these happenings. Poe uses these actions as a vehicle to disturb the reader.
Whether it is brutal acts of violence, or disturbing hallucinations, Poe manages to weave a web disturbance. Although the narrator thought he would get away with his crime; it was only imminent that he was to be found out.
“The Black Cat,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story full of insanity and murder. Throughout the story, primary objective of Edgar Allan Poe is to leave the reader frightened and disturbed. He does this in many ways; the first way is the violent deaths that his characters suffer. Another is the addiction to alcohol by the main character. Lastly, the morose descriptions that he uses help add to the story.
Edgar Allan Poe’s stories almost always consist of violence and alcohol. During his time period, not many people appreciate his stories since they were so violent and the characters died in very brutal ways. His stories lead many people to believe that he is mentally insane. In “The Black Cat,” there are multiple examples of violent death. First, Pluto, the cat starts to drive the narrator insane. One day he decides that he can not take it anymore; he grabs the cat and rips out its eye with a pen. The cat lives, and does not stop annoying him. One day he has just had enough, so he hangs the cat. This is the first violent death in this short story. The second occurs when he and his wife are walking down into the basement; when his new cat trips him. After this, his temper snaps and he grabs his axe. Right before he maliciously murders the cat, his wife steps in front of him. This enrages him even more and leads him to bury the axe into her head instead of the cat. During a lot of his stories, there is also a lot of alcohol. Many of his characters including the narrator in “The Black Cat” are gluttons.
Edgar Allan Poe gives amazing descriptions of the deaths that his characters encounter, and also of the thoughts going through the main characters head before and also as he follows through with his actions. In “The Black Cat,” he describes what the narrator is thinking as he rips out Pluto’s eye, and later on as he hangs him. Another time when Poe uses great description is when the narrator violently murders his wife. He describes the axe going into her head as “burying the axe in her brain.”
Tyler Anderson
The Back Cat
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story about a borderline insane man whose own emotions and alcohol problem ultimately cause him to lose control of himself, commit several heinous and malicious acts of violence hatred. The narrator loves pets; he and his wife have many. Although he loves all his animals, the narrator is most partial to a black cat named Pluto. But, the narrator begins to change. His mind poisoned by alcohol, he ultimately loses control of himself and commits several heinous acts of violence and hatred. In “The Black Cat,” Poe’s primary objective is to disturb the reader through the actions of the narrator.
There are several examples of Poe’s effort to disturb the reader. First, Early in the story, one may notice that the narrator’s thought process changes rapidly but does not follow a linear pattern. This variety of thinking may is not commonly found in today’s society, therefore one may find it to be disturbing; humans that anything do not understand to be strange or disturbing. Next, the narrator is driven to brutal violence towards his pets and his wife. He resents the behavior of the latter, and slowly becomes angry at his companions and wife. The narrator, in a drunken stupor, cuts the eye out of Pluto. Later, he hangs the cat. Later, he comes upon another cat, whose features resemble Pluto’s. Although he befriends the cat, he is driven insane by the memory of Pluto. Therefore, he chooses to take out his resentment on the cat and his wife. The cat annoys him further, and fills him with rancor. He attempts to kill the cat, but his wife interferes. . In a blind rage, he kills his wife, and the cat “escapes.” Although the narrator thought he would get away with his crime; it was only imminent that he was to be found out. The moaning of the cat within the walls was likely the most disturbing portion of the story.
These actions are found to be very disturbing to the reader. Finally, Poe focuses on disturbing the reader by causing the narrator mind to become filled with remorse and agony. His conscience is nagging at him because of the acts he committed. When the narrator’s house burns down, there is an imprint of the cat on the wall. When he finds the second cat, it seems to be missing and eye, and has markings that bear the silhouette of gallows. There is a degree of mystery to these occurrences, and makes the reader wonder whether or not the narrator is actually imagining these happenings. Poe uses these actions as a vehicle to disturb the reader.
Whether it is brutal acts of violence, or disturbing hallucinations, Poe manages to weave a web disturbance. Although the narrator thought he would get away with his crime; it was only imminent that he was to be found out.
A Paradoxical Dream
"Of Mice and Men" is one of the greatest fworks of American literature of all time. The story is about two ranch workers who both aspire to live out their days in a ranch of their own. The dream is realistic, however the two interpretations of the dream differ. One of the characters, George, just wants a small ranch with a few farm animals. His companion, Lennie, its mentally disabled. He has the mindset of a child, his only dream is to have a ranch with rabbits. He has an intense obession with all things furry, uncluding mice, rabbits and dogs. Both men share the same dream, but each has his own perception of hte dream.
The first reason as t
(Not finished)
Post a Comment