The Black Cat Suspense Analysis

Edgar Allen Poe is often regarded as a master of building suspense. Poe develops suspense in “The Black Cat” through the following three events: When the narrator cuts out Pluto’s eye, when the narrator finds another black cat that looks almost exactly like Pluto, when the white patch on the second black cat’s chest forms into a hangman’s noose. One of the major turn point’s in the story is when the narrator cuts out Pluto’s eye. It gives the readers a feel that this isn’t the same person anymore. Poe writes the narrator’s thoughts and actions, “I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” (Poe 2). This shows his disposition change from loving person, to a hateful person that hurts the thing he loved the most. Poe gives us anxiety over the fact to see how far, and crazy he will get before he stops or is stopped. When he finds the second black cat he thinks he is going to like the new cat. He instead finds he feels something different, he notes, “For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just …show more content…
The narrator expresses his thoughts in saying, “It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name – and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared – it was now, I say, the image of a hideous – of a ghastly thing – of the GALLOWS” (Poe 4). Poe gives us anxiety and wondering of this. This foreshadows his death that he will later face in the story. It also represents what he did to Pluto by hanging him. This exemplifies that he is mad, and is going crazy by his drastic mood swings, and the fact that he thinks that the spot is turning into the gallows. This allows the reader to wonder If it was actually turning into the shape of the gallows, or if it is just him going