Literary

Analysis of The
Black Cat

Submitted by:
Trexie May D. Del Castillo
10 – XIII Martyrs
February 19, 2018
 THE
BLACK
CAT
I. INTRODUCTION
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” delivers all of the spooky elements that
make a terrifying and haunting tale. This particular dark short story
combines fear and guilt with brutality and violence, ultimately leading to
the murder of the narrator’s wife. However, it also explores the themes of
depths of the flaws in the human spirit, including battling with alcoholism,
the dangers of domestic violence, and the ultimate judgment that follows
the most heinous of sins. It also leaves the reader to wonder about the
perverseness that lies within all of us, as the narrator suggests. Perhaps it
is most terrifying to wonder if the narrator claims that this flaw lies within
our own souls, are we also capable of committing such egregious acts of
violence against those we love?

II. VOCABULARY
A. Part of Speech
1. succinct – adjective
2. docile – adjective
3. sagacious – adjective
4. gossamer – noun
5. perverse – adjective
6. stupefy – verb
7. chimera – noun
8. intemperance – noun
9. malevolent – adjective
10. scruple – verb
B. Definition
1. succinct
- (especially of something written or spoken) briefly and clearly
expressed.
2. docile
- ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.
3. sagacious
–having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment;
shrewd.
4. gossamer
-  a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun by small
spiders, which is seen especially in autumn; used to refer to
something very light, thin, and insubstantial or delicate.
5. perverse
- (of a person or their actions) showing a deliberate and obstinate
desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often
in spite of the consequences.
6. stupefy
- make (someone) unable to think or feel properly.
7. chimera
- a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or
impossible to achieve.
8. intemperance
- lack of moderation or restraint ; excessive indulgence, especially in
alcohol.
9. malevolent
- having or showing a wish to do evil to others.
10. scruple
- a feeling of doubt or hesitation with regard to the morality or
propriety of a course of action
C. EXAMPLE SENTENCE

1. Realworterbuch gives a succinct account of the older views.

2. The women he remembered were docile and silent.
3. Step by step, with sagacious and patient accuracy, he advanced to the
great discovery which has immortalized his name.
4. Through Carla’s gossamer sleeves, we could see her thin arms.
5. The scepticism which challenges the whole collection may be set aside
as radically perverse and unreasonable.
6. When you get someone drunk so he cannot think or respond clearly, this
is an example of a situation where you stupefy him.
7. The economic system that he so highly values is a chimera.
8.  Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases.
9. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting and in my mind gave him the
most malevolent and bitter replies.
10. Where he detects or suspects the insertion of fabulous matter he
has no scruple in saying so.

III. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan

Poe was born in Boston,
Massachusetts. Poe’s father and
mother, both professional actors, died
before the poet was three years old,
and John and Frances Allan raised him
as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia.
John Allan, a prosperous tobacco
exporter, sent Poe to the best
boarding schools and later to the
University of Virginia, where Poe
excelled academically. After less than
one year of school, however, he was
forced to leave the university when
Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling
debts.
Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan
deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States
Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was
published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al
Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant
critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted
to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for
lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria
Clemm and her daughter Virginia in Baltimore, Maryland.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in
1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in
Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he
married Virginia, who was fourteen years old at the time. Over the next ten
years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and
the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he
established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He
published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of
the House of Usher," “The Tell-Tale Heart," “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue," and “The Raven.” After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in
1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He
returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in
Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3,
1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days
later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners
who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from
rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on

American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the
originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit
him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the
first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a
literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s
sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud
claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years
translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first
American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

IV. SETTINGS

The story opens in the cell of a prisoner the day before he is to be executed
by hanging. After introducing himself to readers as a man who underwent a
horrifying experience, the prisoner writes down the details of this
experience, which led to his imprisonment and scheduled execution. The
events in his tale are set at his home and in a tavern. Although these events
take place over several years, the recounting of these events in writing
takes place on a single day in the narrator's prison cell. 

V. CHARACTERS

The Narrator - a prisoner scheduled for execution. His loathing of a cat he

once loved leads to his commission of a capital crime. 
The Narrator's Wife - a woman of agreeable disposition who likes animals
and obtains many pets for her husband. 
First Black Cat - a cat named Pluto that loves the narrator but irritates
him when it follows him everywhere.
Second Black Cat - a cat that resembles the first black cat and may be a
reincarnation of the latter–or so the narrator may think.
Policemen - officers who investigate the happenings at the home of the
narrator.
Servant - person working in the narrator's household.

VI. THEME
A major theme of "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe is
violence. Once again Poe uses the device of the unreliable narrator to
 weave a tale of horror and violence, stemming from the narrator's craven
urge to destroy his family and pets.

VII. POINT OF VIEW

The short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person
narrative.  The narrator has limited knowledge and is an unreliable
narrator. The narrator’s unreliability is made known from the first
lines when he tries to explain to the readers that he is not mad, even if what he
is about to narrate might make him seem insane

VIII. PLOT

 Introduction

The narrator is telling his story as a condemned man, flashing back to the
beginning. He was a peculiar boy, particularly fond of animals. He married
young and his wife made sure they had many animals, especially one
particularly large black cat named Pluto. The narrator confesses that he is an
alcoholic, and this made him violent towards everyone – his wife and his pets,
but he was able to keep himself from abusing Pluto.

 Rising Action

One night, in a drunken stupor, the narrator thinks Pluto is avoiding him, so
he seizes him and cuts out one of his eyes. He is ashamed in the present of his
deed, but back then, his shame only lasted a short while. Pluto, of course,
avoided the narrator and the narrator began to be irritated by this.

 Climax

The cat follows the narrator home. The cat loves the narrator, and because of
his guilt from past deeds, the narrator begins to loathe the cat. The cat is also
missing an eye, like Pluto. The more the narrator avoids the cat, the more he
follows him. The spot on his chest begins to resemble a gallows, frightening
the narrator. One day, on the way to the cellar, the cat trips the narrator on the
stairs and he raises an axe to kill him; he is stopped by his wife, and in a rage,
he kills her with the axe instead.

 Falling Action

The narrator walls his wife up within the wall of the cellar. The cat seems to
have fled, and the narrator sleeps peacefully for the first time in a long time.
Three or four days pass, and the police finally come to search the premises.
The narrator, however, is unbothered because he knows they’ll never find his
wife.

 Resolution

As the police are about to leave the cellar and the premises for good, the
narrator takes his cane and raps on the cellar wall to boast about the
construction of the house. At that moment, a wailing and screaming comes
from behind the plaster. The police open the wall and find the narrator’s wife,
along with the black and white cat, whom the narrator had accidentally walled
up with her body.

IX. MORAL OF THE STORY

The Black Cat" is in many ways a moral tale that deals with the tension
between love and hate and that warns of the dangers of alcohol, a
substance to which Poe himself was addicted for much of his life. The
narrator appears at first to love both his wife and his pets, but by the end of
the story his fondness has turned to neglect, spite, and even hatred,
particularly for Pluto and his successor. Although Poe does not provide a
solid explanation for the narrator's encroaching loss of sanity, perhaps
suggesting that madness might happen at any time to any person, the
narrator admits the role of alcohol in his behavior. In addition, the arrival
of the second cat is closely related to his alcoholism, since he first finds the
cat in a seedy drinking establishment. The second cat ultimately serves as
the facilitator of justice when it reveals the corpse's hiding place at the end
of the tale, and its initial appearance on top of a hogshead of gin or rum
emphasizes its moral purpose.

X. REFLECTION

It talks about psychological forces that made people to do bad things. All the
feelings in these story proves that human mind is an extremely fragile thing.
People go from a state to other in seconds and later they are not responsible for
their acts. Irrationality is the most dangerous feeling because it’s what separates
human from animals, that is, human is a rational animal and when people
become irrational and do terrible things they are actually equaling into the
animals. Perverseness which is a state of mind that make people do evil things
even with those they love is definitely a problem when this person is not able to
think for itself. And guilt not always is enough to make the person stop with his
or her acts. Mix all these feeling together and we have a monster instead of a
person.