I have
decided to read it, because I like the mysterious stories, mystery and cats,
especially black.
While
reading the story for the first time, I thought it would be a story of the
friendship between main character and his pet. Of course, I know Poe’s manner
of writing and his extraordinary style, but I can’t imagine, that he would
describe it in so impressive way. "The Black Cat" is Poe's second psychological study
of domestic violence and guilt (the first being "The Tell-Tale
Heart"); however, this story does not deal with premeditated murder. The
reader is told that the narrator appears to be a happily married man, who has
always been exceedingly kind and gentle. He attributes his downfall to the
"Fiend Intemperance" and "the spirit of perverseness."
Perverseness, he believes, is "...one of the primitive impulses of the
human heart." "Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing
a vile or a stupid action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?"
Perverseness provides the rationale for otherwise unjustifiable acts, such as
killing the first cat or rapping with his cane upon the plastered-up wall
behind which stood his wife's corpse "...already greatly decayed and
clotted with gore."
We might argue that what the
narrator calls "perverseness" is actually conscience. Guilt about his
alcoholism seems to the narrator the "perverseness" which causes him
to maim and kill the first cat. Guilt about those actions indirectly leads to
the murder of his wife who had shown him the gallows on the second cat's
breast. The disclosure of the crime, as in "The Tell-Tale Heart," is
caused by a warped sense of triumph and the conscience of the murderer.
What makes this story different
from "The Tell-Tale Heart" is that Poe has added a new element to aid
in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural. Now the
story has an added twist as the narrator hopes that the reader, like himself,
will be convinced that these events were not “...an ordinary
succession of very natural causes and effects.”
To
those of you who have never heard of Edgar Allan
Poe, here is the link to her biography that I consider worth
reading:
Finally,
as I have promised, here is the link to the short story “The Black Cat” itself:
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