THE FINAL ANALYSIS
“The
Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
The story “The Black Cat” under analysis is written by Edgar Allan Poe.
The author is famous American writer, poet,
editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest
American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the
inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with
contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American
writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a
financially difficult life and career.
The extract describes a man, who was an alcoholic addicted and he was
married and had a pet. The pet was a black cat, his name was Pluto “This latter was a remarkably large and
beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In
speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured
with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which
regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious
upon this point--and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that
it happens, just now, to be remembered.” The man killed his cat, but it
was alive, after all events he tried to kill it for the second time, but he
killed his wife and mured her in the wall. Suddenly, the police came and her
body in the wall with the cat on her head.
The basic theme of the story is a study of the
psychology of guilt. A murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes
himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled
by a nagging reminder of his guilt.
The events in the analyzed text happen in several places. Poe provides
few details about his settings. There are several settings:
· the
jail cell
This is a small space where the narrator is forced to
examine his actions and his life. He
still refuses to take responsibility for his actions.
·
the narrator’s home
The first house becomes a prison cell for the wife and the pets. The
reader discovers that the family has been rich and even had servants. When the
house is destroyed by fire, after years of abuse, the pets finally escape their
awful "home," and die tortured by the flames.
The bedroom wall that is left standing after the fire with its raised
image of the cat foreshadows the second cat’s arrival in the man’s life.
It also represents the psychological hold that Pluto has on the narrator.
·
the yard of the burned house
This is the place where Pluto is hung. This foreshadows the death
of the narrator as he will be hung the next day after his story is completed.
·
the new house
The second house is old and depressing. The family has lost their
wealth in the fire.
·
the bar where the second cat is found
The bar is a dirty, dank place where the narrator notices the cat
sitting atop a huge barrel of wine.
·
the cellar
The cellar is another important aspect of setting.
One day she [the wife] accompanied me, upon some household errand, into
the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit…
It becomes a horrific scene because the wife innocently tries to protect
her pet but is brutally killed. Her tomb becomes the cellar wall where her body
will decompose and eventually be mutilated by the second cat, who has to live
there for four days
It is unclear how much time elapses during the story. The span of time
is detected only by the narrator’s perverted thoughts and actions which
determine the course of the story.
The setting of the events in the given story is fantastic. It is
presented in a detailed way. It symbolizes the emotional state of the
characters. The author uses descriptions in order to present it in a way of
mystery and fear, uses symbolism “black cat”, metaphors, epithets, repetitions,
which helps him to make the story untypical and unusual for readers.
From the point of view of presentation the text is the 1st
person narrative.
The characters we meet in the extract under analysis are the narrator,
the narrator’s wife, a cat Pluto, the second cat and a policeman. The writer
reveals characters by means of indirect characterization. The author shows them
through the narrator’s description of the actions, thoughts and emotions:
·
the narrator
The narrator has major issues. This unnamed character is an abusive
bully and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and
himself. “From
my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My
tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my
companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents
with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was
so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiar of character grew
with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal
sources of pleasure. To those 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. There is something in the
unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart
of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer
fidelity of mere Man.” He's writing to us from his prison cell, on
the eve of his scheduled death by hanging. In addition to the details of his
heinous crimes, he reveals his psychological transformation from nice-guy to
villain. He tells us that around the time he murdered his wife, all
"good" had been driven from his personality.
And he doesn't seem to be confessing out of a sense of guilt. Over the course
of the story, the narrator provides several reasons for his various behaviors.
But mostly he seems to be blaming the cat (or cats) for all his problems.
According the narrator, it's the cat's fault that the domestic scene of the
story ultimately turned so foul. This seems to be his real point in
telling us the story.
·
the
narrator's wife
The brief outline the narrator provides us of his wife suggests that she
is kind, giving, loyal, and even heroic at the end. The narrator says she has
"in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been distinguishing
characteristic." She is a highly sympathetic character, in her own right.
The fact that the narrator abuses her, and her beloved pets, makes her even
more sympathetic, and makes us think that the man is a complete bad character.
·
Pluto
Pluto is fine specimen of a cat. All black, large, fuzzy, and "and
sagacious to an astonishing degree".
Over the years Pluto moves from a pampered pet to an abused beast. He is
blinded and ultimately murdered by his owner. The narrator might have us believe
that he is actually a witch in disguise, transforming from witch to Pluto, to
the second black cat. Pluto is a cat, and only a cat or he is a symbol or
allegory for other things or he's both.
Poe had pets of his own, and is suspected to have been an animal lover. At a
most basic level, the story seems designed to invite sympathy for animals, and
raise awareness of animal abuse.
·
the second cat
The second black cat looks almost exactly like Pluto. He's big, black,
and missing an eye. The only difference is the white spot. The spot starts off
innocently enough, but then grows into an image of the gallows, if the narrator
can be believed. With all these similarities, and with the narrator's
insistence that the cat is more than just a cat.
·
The police man
These policeman are generic characters, without
defining characteristics, other than the fact that they are policeman. In this
case, the policemen get us thinking about the theme of "Justice and
Judgment" in the story. Here's one way to look at it. None of the
narrator's behavior up to the point he murdered his wife was illegal during the
time Poe was writing – even if we think of the cat as allegorically
representing a slave or a child.
A man could beat his wife, slave, child, and animals
and be completely within the law. It was legal to kill slaves and pets, so long
as they belonged to the person doing the killing. The death of the man's wife
was necessary before the narrator could be brought to justice under the law. In
some ways the policemen represent the limits of legal justice. The police are
limited in what they can do. Even if they were afraid the man would kill his
wife, they can't do anything about it until he actually does the deed.
The plot of the story runs as follows:
·
Introduction - Death Row
The first thing we learn is that the nameless narrator is going to die the
next day, and that he wants to write his story, which will be ugly. This story,
the narrator says, is going to be about some things that happened to him at
home. The "consequences" of what happened "have terrified – have
tortured – have destroyed" him. We don't yet know why he's going to die
the following day, or where exactly he is.
·
Exposition - A Drinking Problem
The narrator tells us that as a kid the he was a kind, sensitive animal
lover. We also learn that he and his wife had had "birds, gold-fish, a
fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat". The cat is
Pluto. The conflict begins to unfold when the man describes the way his
personality changed for the worse when he started drinking heavily, several
years after Pluto became his pet. The conflict is within the narrator's home,
between himself and his wife and pets, who he begins to abuse, physically and
verbally, except for Pluto.
·
Development of events - Pluto is Murdered
When the narrator turns on Pluto, he doesn't do it halfway. First he cuts
the cat's eye out, and then he hangs him from the tree in his garden, leaving
the body there when he goes to sleep. This definitely complicates things for
the narrator. He is now a cat murderer, and his once happy home seems to be
more and more nightmarish, especially for the other characters.
·
Climax - Fire
Somehow, when the narrator goes to sleep that night (after murdering Pluto
in the morning) his house catches on fire. Someone (it's never revealed who)
wakes him from his sleep with a warning, just in time. The narrator, his wife,
and "a servant" escape the flames. All the family's financial
security goes up in smoke. Presumably, the birds, gold-fish, […] fine dog,
rabbits, [and] small monkey perish in the flames, though the narrator never
mentions them again. The climax propels this desperate family into poverty and
into changing residences.
The Cat Comes Back
We can think of a completely different cat. In any case, the arrival of the
second cat marks the halfway point in this story. It is suspenseful precisely
because we aren't sure what the second cat is. If the narrator can be believed,
the cat is not only missing an eye, like Pluto, but also grows an image of a
gallows on his chest (a "gallows" is an apparatus used for hanging
people). The cat also seriously gets on the narrator's nerves. We might see the
cat as affectionate, and desperate for affection, but the narrator sees him as
executing some awful plot against him. In the stage we see the narrator getting
worse and worse. And we learn that the narrator is writing from a "felon's
cell". Waiting to see what lands him in jail adds another layer of
suspense to the story.
·
Denouement - The Perfect Crime
During that fateful trip to the cellar of the family's new residence (an
"old building") the narrator tries to kill the cat with his axe. When
his wife intervenes, the axe is turned on her. The narrator thinks he's
successfully hidden the body and bluffed the cops. He isn't upset about killing
his wife, and is happy he has managed to make the cat run away.
·
Conclusion - The Cat Come Back
In the conclusion, the cat reappears, and the murder is discovered. The man
seems convinced that the cat exposed him on purpose. The description of the
cat's "voice" coming from inside the wall suggests that if the cat
did intentionally allow himself to be walled up, in order to expose the man, he
paid an awful price for it.
The types of speech employed by the author of the analyzed extract are
narration, monologue and description. The given story is rather a narration
than a description.
In order to portray the characters vividly and convincingly the author
of the analyzed story resorts to the following devices:
˗
Parallelism
This story
contains various parallel structures. Typically at the beginning of the story
which shows parallel features and repetition of key words.
“In their consequences,
these events have terrified, - have tortured – have destroyed me.”
The phrases are
parallel, which have an effect of clarifying the narrator’s actual condition.
He is in a great tension by the consequences of his madness deed. The phrases
put at the beginning of the story intentionally, in order to indicate the
coming ghostly event. The negative words like, “terrified”, “tortured”,
“destroyed” give emphasis for the message.
The purpose of
these parallel features is to give emphasis to the narrator’s hard condition.
There is also another parallel, written after he accidentally killed his wife,
in the presence of the police men.
“I
walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom,
and roamed easily to and fro.”
The parallel
sentences show the enormous anxiety of the murderer. They create image of the
circumstances. The power of this parallel structure and lexical choice makes
the narration interesting. The process of torturing the cat is
presented by the use of repetitions and a parallel construction in order to
emphasize the psychological state of the murderer and points out his
concentration on what he is doing, his being caught in an endless loop of
reflection on this terrible deed, here is the example:
“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, and
with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I
felt it had given me no reason of offence; - hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a
sin…."
This clearly makes the thoughts of the character
displayed and helps the reader get closer to his bizarre nature. By the means
of parallelism, the write could make connections between ideas and claims of
his character and also helped keep the reader on track.
˗
Repetition
The repetition is due to some
specific reasons, which all support to describe the narrator's state of mind,
his thoughts and views when telling the story. It is important to mention that
these kinds of repetition sometimes create parallel structures too. Some of the
examples are:
"I
grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless
of the feelings of others."
"When reason
returned with the morning -- when I had slept off the fumes of
the night's debauch -- I experienced a sentiment half of
horror, half of remorse,"
“These
walls are you going, gentlemen? – these walls are solidly
put together…”
“Some
intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the
common-place – some intellect more calm, more
logical, and far less excitable than my own.”
"I blush, I burn, I shudder,
while I pen the damnable atrocity"
The purpose here is to emphasize on
the condition of narrator's mind and how he wants to declare his destroyed mood
and sometimes stressing on the speeches to attract reader's attention.
˗
Metaphor
and Personification
The story under the analysis is rich
in metaphors. Metaphors which are used to illustrate the changes of the
inner world of the character and his behavior with others can be found in such
cases as:
“Many
projects entered my mind.”
“I had
walled the monster up within the tomb!”
“…and I
resigned myself thenceforward to despair.”
“the hideous
beast whose craft had seduced me into murder…”
“This
peculiarity of character grew with my growth.”
“The fury of
a demon instantly possessed me.”
“…and soon drowned
in wine all memory of the deed.”
“But at
length reflection came to my aid.”
Personification is used as regards to the abstract
inanimate objects and notions in order to present them as some kind of mystical
powers that “grow upon” the narrator and that he is unable to control:
“evil thoughts became my sole intimates”,
“the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments,
which give direction to the character of man”,
“and then came…the spirit of PERVERSENESS”
“My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight
from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every
fibre of my frame”
There
is no doubt, that by using variety of metaphors and personifications, the
author points our attention to some important situations while the narrator
describes the events happened to him.
˗
Paradox
In the first
line of the first paragraph, there is an obvious paradox with a parallel
structure, which takes the attention of the reader, as below:
“For the most
wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither
expect nor solicit belief.
The narrator
introduces his story, which deviates from the normal story, in an antonyms
parallel approach, that his story is peculiar. The paradoxical phrases, “most
wild” and “most homely” create contradictory vision to the reader
since they are nearly antonyms. The one who reads this first line becomes eager
to know what wild and homely narration is. There is also another
paradoxical expression which is an antonym parallel at the same time. In the
middle of the story saying:
“...even
beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most
Terrible God.”
He referred to
God as the most merciful and most terrible. This also reflects his madness,
that how could be merciful and terrible at the same time. Yet, the paradox here
holds a purpose, for to show in what kind of dilemma he has been to.
˗
Symbolism
and Allusion
This story has a
great deal of symbolism which plays an important role throughout the whole
story. From the symbolism in the story we learn a lot about the hidden messages
that are behind the narrators actions.
“The Black Cat” symbolizes death, darkness in traditional terms.
As in one of the speeches of the wife of the narrator usually regarding that,
“… all black cats are witches in disguise.” Yet black
cats can symbolize a lot more things such things as death, sorcery, witchcraft,
spirits of the dead, and most common a symbol of bad luck. The cat s name
itself can be interpreted as a symbol. Pluto, the name of the cat, can
symbolize what we know from Greek and Roman mythology, which is that Pluto was
the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld which is an Allusion also. Another
part in the story which can symbolize a lot of things is the fact that the cat
is half blinded, this could exemplify that the narrator too is somehow half
blinded maybe by drinking, or by guilt, or the disinclination to see disturbing
things. The physical harm the narrator imposes upon the cat can symbolize how
he instead wants to harm his wife.
Even though the
narrator blinded and hanged the black cat. Another white-spotted black cat
appears. This makes the story deviant, that it is connected with the spiritual
world. Here, the symbol is clearly seen that the evil spirit is not flesh and blood
that could be killed. He follows the human beings as the black cat follows the
narrator.
Fire is another
symbol in the story which represents the judgment for the committed crime, in
the story. His house is burned after the killing of the black cat.
“The
plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire -”
The story is
enriched by these symbols which gained the author a good reputation in terms of
style variation.
˗
Irony
There are
various ironies in this story. The typical one is when the narrator worries
that after he relates his story, others will not give it much thought and will
not probably consider it as an ordinary event. Nonetheless, the narrator is
telling the story from his prison cell awaiting his death, and his tale is a
criminal one out of his wrath. Undoubtedly, this seems very far from ordinary.
He describes his events as normal and that he had committed no mistakes or
faults which in fact he is a dangerous murderer. This example clarifies how he
narrates in an ironical way:
"Yet,
mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I
would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world,
plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household
events."
As we see, we
get the first impression as if we are listening to a very rational and
intelligent man who is about to explain a series of bizarre events,
consequently, we identifies how ironically he impressed his feeling when we
find out he is really a mad person.
Irony also can be found when the narrator cuts out
Pluto's eye, the cat sees well "…but
he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as
usual...". Previously, the cat loved and trusted the narrator,
following him everywhere, and they were fond of each other. But after the cat
misses an eye, it sees the narrator for what he is, an imprudent, dangerous
man.
˗
Simile
This is a prevail figure of speech and its use is
inevitable in the sequences of the story. The narrator attempts to liken and associate
between things. The famous conventional belief about the evil spirits of the
cats is confirmed by such a simile:
"all
black cats as witches in disguise."
"the
spirit of PERVERSENESS as if my final and irrevocable overthrow."
The case of simile is also
used in the final part of the story to intensify the tension of the events:
"a cry…like
the sobbing of a child."
There other
multitude uses of simile which has been used by the author to attach between
images and meanings of phrases and expressions.
One literary device that is immediately evident is alliteration,
the repetition of initial consonant sounds. In this case, the alliterative
words are "sooner," "sunk," and "silence"; both
words begin with the letter "s," creating a specific form of alliteration
called sibilance (repetition of the "s" sound). Sibilance
is evident also within the words "answered" and "voice."
Another device that appears is assonance, the repetition of vowel
sounds. The long “u” sound in “sooner” repeats in “tomb.” The long “o” sound in
“blows” repeats in “voice.”
Obviously, all
these elements made the story deviated semantically and contributed prominently
to the effect of shocking events in Poe’s
work “The Black Cat”. Poe’s skillful use of all of these elements needs
further deep stylistic analysis under other methods.
Summing up the analysis of the given extract one should say that the
writer Edgar Poe brilliantly uses parallelism, symbolism and repetition, which
help to reveal the main character’s nature and bring home to the reader the
main idea of the text. The general atmosphere of mysticism,
dark romanticism and extreme terror is brilliantly presented in the story and
well emphasized by the appropriately applied stylistic devices that enable the
readers to feel and live through all the events described by the author.
The author writes his stories like his own experience and it makes his
stories amazing and makes readers to think off it. “The Black Cat” is a great
example of the mystic story, this story symbolizes the author’s attitude to the
death and life. And it helps me to do the same.
