The Black Cat Essay

truth relates to Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat. In The Black Cat, the unnamed narrator demonstrates unreliable narration. In The Black Cat, the unnamed narrator shows characteristics of unreliable narrator: weak reasoning, weak sense of morality and isolation through his actions. To begin, by trying to prove that the unnamed narrator is not crazy, the narrator demonstrates weak reasoning. In the scene where he kills Pluto, the cat, the mystery character demonstrates weak reasoning…

monstrosity. Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok believed that “traumatic events or secrets could be passed on without coming to conscious attention," (Smith 146); thus, the children are embodiments of ones worst nightmares. I will argue that in The Black Cat, there exist, what Abraham and Torok suggest: The Phantom. Abraham describes the phantom as, “a formation of the unconscious that never been conscious…it passes…from the parent’s unconscious into the child’s,” (Smith 147) furthermore,…

different, but also seemed quite the same. In his works, “Ligeia”, “Berenice”, and “The Black Cat” there are many distinct themes and analytical elements shown throughout the works. However, many of these are shared within all three of these pieces of literature. In these Edgar Allen Poe short stories, two recognizable themes and one analytical element are shown to be similar. In “Ligeia”, “Berenice”, and “The Black Cat”, a common theme is a mental grotesque, a common theme is transformations,…

people do things they normally won't do. These addictions can significantly modify someone’s mindset. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” the narrator has a drinking problem that quickly changes him from the inside out. In the story “The Black Cat” Poe uses tone, inner thinking, and metaphors to create a dark mood in the story. In the story “The Black Cat” the author Poe changes his tone to cold and bitter to change the mood to make the reader feel somber and pensive. Poe does…

“The Black Cat”, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a horror fiction short story about a man who is retelling events that happened to him as if it was normal and he was sane. He describes his relationship with alcohol and how he abused animals from a young age. He describes his experiences with one particular cat named Pluto, and how he killed his wife in attempt to kill the cat. Although he starts off the story retelling it as if he were a sane person, there are many pieces of evidence from the text that…

Recapitulation of “The Black Cat” by E. A. Poe Gothic Literature has been around since 1765 producing barbarity and alarming the readers. These stories are meant to create ideas and pictures in one’s head that are distasteful. Many authors such as Edgar Allan Poe achieve to fright people and yet make them read on more of the novel. In “The Black Cat” a man loves animals as much as alcohol and physically abusing his wife. He suddenly grows a strange desire to torture his pet cat, Pluto. The…

In the short stories “Prey” by Matheson, “The Black Cat” by Poe and “The Feather Pillow” by Quiroga all have a common theme. They all depict the main elemental themes of violence, death and the predominance of grotesqueness. The authors integrate these elements in an attempt to use illustrative means to exemplify the horrors found inside the story itself. Gothic literature is fairly rampant with stories of death as many authors use that theme intrinsically throughout their stories. In the…

investigate his house, four days after the narrator killed his wife. This quote connects to the theme because if he wouldn’t have killed his wife, the police wouldn’t be coming to investigate. In conclusion, the theme is shown by setting in “The Black Cat”. In Poe’s short stories, character, conflict, and setting show the theme of think before you act. Character shows the theme because Montresor went with Fortunato without thinking of the consequences. Next, conflict shows the theme…

different ways to categorize stories and tales. There is a concept known as “The Fantastic”, based off of Tzvetan (Yzetyen) Todorov’s ideas of the gothic criteria for gothic literature. The stories “The Lonesome Place”, “The Reencounter” and “The Black Cat” each fall under a category in Todorov’s gothic criteria: The Uncanny, The Marvelous and The Fantastic. In Todorov’s gothic criteria, there are three different categories: The Uncanny, The Marvelous and The Fantastic. In stories that fall…

attached to a black cat named Pluto. However, as Pluto ages, the narrator falls into severe alcoholism. Moreover, he dubs his affliction Fiend Intemperance. Eventually, his drinking led to the abuse of his once-loved animals. Describe Pluto. How do the narrator and his wife initially react to him? Pluto is an all-over black cat who is absolutely…