Short story: " The Black Cat "

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‘The Black Cat’ was first published in August 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post. It’s one of Poe’s shorter stories and one of his most disturbing, focusing on cruelty towards animals, murder, and guilt, and told by an unreliable narrator who’s rather difficult to like.

☆ About the Adger Allan Poe 

click here   Adger Allan Poe 

American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in the national literature.

  

☆About  " The Black Cat " : 

The narrator explains how from a young age he was noted for his tenderness and humanity, as well as his fondness for animals. When he married, he and his wife acquired a number of pets, including a black cat, named Pluto. But as the years wore on, the narrator became more irritable and prone to snap. One night, under the influence of alcohol, he sensed the black cat was avoiding him and so chased him and picked up the animal. The animal bit him slightly on the hand, and the narrator, possessed by a sudden rage, took a pen-knife from his pocket and gouged out one of the cat’s eyes. Although the cat seems to recover from this, the narrator finds himself growing more irritated, until eventually he takes the poor cat out into the garden and hangs it from a tree. Later that night, the narrator wakes to find his house on fire, and he, his wife, and his servant, barely escape alive. All of the narrator’s wealth is lost in the flames.A crowd has gathered around the smouldering remains of the house. Setting foot in the ruins, the narrator finds the strange figure of a gigantic hanging cat on one of the walls, the dead cat having become embedded in the plaster (the narrator surmises that a member of the crowd had cut down the hanging cat and hurled it into the house to try to wake the narrator and his wife). A short while after this, the narrator is befriended by a black cat he finds in a local tavern, a cat that has shown up seemingly out of nowhere, and resembles Pluto in every respect, except that this cat has some white among its black fur. The cat takes a shine to the narrator, so he and his wife take it in as their pet.

However, in time the narrator comes to loathe this cat, too, and once, when he nearly trips over the pet while walking downstairs into the cellar, he picks up an axe and aims a blow at the animal’s head. His wife intervenes and stops him but, in a fit of rage, he buries the axe in his wife’s head, killing her instantly. He conceals the body, but when the police call round to look into his wife’s disappearance, a sound from the place where the narrator has concealed the body exposes the hidden corpse. When the body is revealed, the black cat is there  and it was the cat that had made the noise that gave away the location of the corpse. The narrator had walled up the animal when he had hidden his wife’s body. And with this revelation, the narrator’s story comes to an end.

☆ Idea  of this story : The Black Cat " : 

Love and hate are two key themes in the story. The narrator at first loves his pets and his wife, but as madness takes hold of him, he comes to loathe or dismiss everything that should be of the utmost importance to him.Justice and truth: The narrator tries to hide the truth by walling up his wife's body but the voice of the black cat helps bring him to justice.

Superstition: The black cat is an omen of bad luck, a theme that runs throughout literature. Murder and death: Death is the central focus of the entire story. The question is what causes the narrator to become a killer.On superstition:

"In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusions to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise."

Illusiong versus reality: Does the alcohol release the narrator's inner demons, or is it merely an excuse for his horrendous acts of violence? Is the black cat merely a cat, or something imbued with a greater power to bring about justice or exact revenge?

. On reality vs. illusion:

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief."

Loyalty perverted: A pet is often seen as a loyal and faithful partner in life but the escalating hallucinations the narrator experiences propel him into murderous rages, first with Pluto and then with the cat that replaces him. The pets he once held in highest affection become the thing he most loathes. As the man's sanity unravels, his wife, whom he also purports to love, becomes someone who merely inhabits his home rather than shares his life. She ceases to be a real person, and when she does, she is expendable. When she dies, rather than feel the horror of killing someone he cares for, the man's first response is to hide the evidence of his crime

"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."

The black cat symbolizes the state of the narrator's soul-which is black, mutilated, and decaying. The black cat is symbolic because it is the cat's meowing that draws attention to the wall, and the perverse pleasure the black soul of the narrator takes in believing he has gotten away from it.

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