The Black Cat Essay

The text of bright and emotive prose, which has been chosen for analysis, is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”. It is a famous short story with deep psychological underlying theme.

First of all I would like to say a few words about the author. Edgar Alan Poe was a talented writer and during his lifetime, he made a permanent place for himself in American and world’s literature. Many different factors influenced on his writing style and due to all of them Poe’s products are so inimitable. Edgar Poe’s stories have similar composition and motives that would suggest suppressed emotions from life experiences are being discharged through his writings.

Let’s talk about the subject of our analysis and will be attentive to the details. “The Black Cat” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. This story was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post.  It is possible to say, that more than any of Poe’s stories, “The Black Cat” shows best the capacity of the human mind to observe and to understand its own deterioration and the ability of the mind to comment upon its own destruction without being able to objectively halt that deterioration. The story’s narrator is fully aware of his mental deterioration, and at certain points in the story he understands what is around him have a place and he also recognizes the change that is occurring within him and tries to do something about it, but he finds himself unable to reverse falling into madness.

Different aspects of human life and the way of human thinking is open for readers in this story and in such a way author shows us harmful alcohol influence and what changes it entails. Poe use different psychological direction in his works and “The Black Cat” is the psychology of guilt study. In this story murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt.

If we think about main story’s effect it becomes understandable that in “The Black Cat” it is obvious that the main effect that Poe wanted to achieve and show to his readers was a sense of absolute and total perverseness. Story’s plot takes our thoughts and clearly illustrates that many of the narrator’s acts are without any logic or motivation; they are merely acts of perversity.

The main hero was a good person, he loved animals, was kind and had soft nature, but one day this man changed and became angry and cruel. We can’t say that it is person’s quilt, but at the same time we can’t say that this change is alcohol’s guilt. Only person can be responsible for own life and harmful alcohol influence is under person’s responsibility. Hero of the story degrades more and more, his character changes and his thoughts became dark.  We can see that he really drinks a lot and this alcohol passion made him murderer. One day when narrator was in condition of the alcoholic intoxication he accomplishes a cruel act with his cat Pluto.

Remarkable that Pluto was the narrator’s favourite animal and during several years there was a very special relationship between the animal and the narrator. Than suddenly (due partly to alcohol), it was described in paragraph above, the narrator underwent a significant change: “I grew day by day more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others”. We see, that this change effect is indicated when he came back home intoxicated, imagined and saw in his mind that the beloved cat avoided him, than grasped the cat by its throat and with a penknife, cut out one of its eyes. This act is the beginning of his cruel actions and the beginning of several such acts that will characterize the totality of effect that Poe wanted to achieve in this story. Firstly, narrator was suffering from his actions, but then suddenly he slipped a noose around the neck of the cat and hang a cat at the tree, but even while doing it, tears streamed down his face. Of course, he is ashamed of his actions because he knows that the cat had loved him, but can to do nothing with his internal condition.

Time passes and hero finds a new cat looks like Pluto, with one difference – a white spot on a breast. He likes his new cat, but a demon scores off again. Narrator decides to kill his new animal, but his wife tries to stop him. He kills her and hides her body, but police find it by the cat’s screaming.

As a conclusion I want to write that the main idea of the text, in my opinion, is that Evil is always punished and the man cannot avoid his fate.  The truth will come out anyway and every person should be responsible for all what was and what will be done by own hands. There is no matter how hard the criminal tries to conceal his deeds, the truth will be on surface in any case.  We are always have very important deals and have no time to stop and look at our life and our behavior, we don’t notice that some of our deeds are immoral, but even if we realize the indecency we still make it out of spite. These story shows us what could happen with a person and also it teach us think about our behavior in any situation.