Alcoholism In The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

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Demons; Wretched beasts from the pits of Hell ordered to serve Satan. We all have demons residing inside us and they can be awakened at any moment either through traumatic events or by the demon in the bottle, alcohol. Throughout his life, poet Edgar Allan Poe struggled with alcoholism and this is apparent throughout his short stories and poem. Most noteably his short story, The Black Cat, where the narrators actions are influenced by the demon in the bottle or perhaps influenced by the animal that story is titled after, the black cat that haunts him. Poes chooses a distinct name for the first black cat in the story, Pluto, the cat shares the name with the Roman god of the underworld. This is no coincidence since this is the beast that the …show more content…
The cats appearance to Pluto may be a shock for the narrator, but this is not a shock to the reader. Poe wrote a story about a man struggling with his inner demons so it would not be surprising that the black cat would be seen as a familiar spirit haunting the narrator unbeknownst to him, but obvious for the readers. The phrase “the past will always come back to haunt you” is the perfect phrase to describe this next act of the story as the narrator grows more fearful and scornful of the creature as it lingers in his …show more content…
All the evils in life are man made, every superstitution, every religious view of evil, and every wretched action has been done by man, the narrator presented was never a sane man as he describes, he let alcoholism take the best of and unleashed the inner demons within him. Only an insane man would mutilate and hang a cat solely because he knew it was a bad thing to do, perhaps, the evil black cats presented in the story was only a scapegoat for the narrators inner demons he couldn’t come to grasp with the alcoholism inside him so he projected his evils onto an innocent black cat. The narrators inner demons never came from a bottle nor a cat,instead they were dormant within him the whole

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