The Black Cat (short story)
| "The Black Cat" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Edgar Allan Poe | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror Short story |
| Publication | |
| Publisher | The Saturday Evening Post |
| Media type | Print (periodical) |
| Publication date | August 1843 |
"The Black Cat" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". In both, a murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt. "The Black Cat" is the less well known of the two, probably because it is longer and less tight as a narrative. However, its spaciousness allows a more extensive exploration of the themes of violence, hatred, and guilt, as well as a more mystical, mysterious setting and a chilling end.
Plot
The story opens in a style typical of Poe’s works. An unnamed narrator claims to be perfectly sane and logical, yet the manner of his writing and the story he goes on to relate both seem to prove otherwise. Poe uses an unreliable narrator.
The narrator loves animals. He and his wife have many pets, including a large black cat named Pluto. This cat is especially fond of the narrator and vice versa. Their mutual friendship lasts for several years, until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night, after coming home intoxicated, he wishes the cat out of his presence, and tries to remove him physically. The cat then bites the narrator, and in a fit of rage, he seizes the animal, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket, and deliberately gouges out the cat’s eye.
From that moment onward, the cat (understandably) flees in terror at his master’s approach. At first, the narrator is remorseful and regrets his cruelty. "But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS." He takes the cat out in the garden one morning and hangs it from a tree, where it dies. That very night, his house mysteriously catches on fire forcing the narrator and his wife to flee.
The next day, the narrator returns to the ruins of his home to find, imprinted on the single wall that survived the fire, the figure of a gigantic cat, hanging by its neck from a rope.
At first, this image terrifies the narrator, but gradually he determines a logical explanation for it, and begins to miss Pluto. Some time later, he finds a similar cat in a tavern. It is the same size and color as the original and is even missing an eye. The only difference is a large white patch on the animal’s chest. The narrator takes it home, but soon begins to loathe, even fear the creature. After a time, the white patch of fur begins to take shape and, to the narrator, forms the shape of the gallows.
Then, one day when the narrator and his wife are visiting the cellar in their new home, the cat gets under its master’s feet and nearly trips him down the stairs. In a fury, the man grabs an axe and tries to kill the cat but is stopped by his wife. Enraged, he buries the axe in her skull instead. To conceal her body he removes bricks from a protrusion in the wall, places her body there, and repairs the hole. When the police came to investigate, they find nothing and the narrator goes free. The cat, which he intended to kill as well, has gone missing.
On the last day of the investigation, the narrator accompanies the police into the cellar. There, completely confident in his own safety, the narrator comments on the sturdiness of the building and raps upon the wall he had built around his wife’s body. A wailing sound fills the room. The alarmed police tear down the wall and find the wife’s corpse, and on her head the screeching black cat who has apparently been eating her.
His secret discovered, the narrator is sentenced to the gallows.
Major themes
 | This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. |
A recurring theme in the works of Poe is the spirit of perverseness, defined in "The Black Cat" as the longing "to do wrong for the wrong's sake only". The hanging of the cat out of pure spite is a deed done out of the spirit of perverseness. Perhaps the narrator’s adoption of another animal just like Pluto is also for the sole purpose of further tormenting its spirit. With the assistance of alcohol, the narrator in essence drives himself insane by indulging in transgressions. This leads to the killing of his wife, and knocking on the very wall behind which her body was hidden.
Like the narrator in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator of "The Black Cat" has questionable sanity. Near the beginning of the tale, the narrator says he would be "mad indeed" if he should expect a reader to believe the story, implying that has already been accused of madness.[1]
This story also deals in the fantastic. The boundary between "reality" and "fantasy" is somewhat hazy throughout the story. It is mentioned, in the beginning, that the narrator’s wife sometimes joked that Pluto was a witch in disguise, as is the superstition of black cats. Not only is Pluto the Roman god of the Underworld, the apparently coincidental burning of the narrator’s house on the very night of Pluto’s death is also suspicious. Is that a consequence, perhaps a curse, created by the cat, or simply an accident? The impression of the cat on the wall seems especially surreal, but the narrator makes a logical excuse for this as well.
Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd — by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
The appearance of the second cat, the gallows on its chest, and all the subsequent events are also highly coincidental, yet not altogether impossible. The reader can believe that this story is entirely logical, but the extreme improbability of the circumstances suggests otherwise.
Guilt is an obvious theme explored in the short story. The narrator is haunted by guilt, first by the appearance of a cat that doubles the first cat he has killed and also by the taunting cry of the walled-in cat.
Curiosity is a common emotion that writers exploit in order to reach their audience. Many introductions are written, including the first lines of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," in order to evoke the reader’s interest. After being captured by the hook, the reader is less likely to put the book down and more likely to pay close attention in order to satisfy his or her inquisitiveness. Poe’s main purpose in his opening remarks in "The Black Cat" is to elicit curiosity in his audience; in order to achieve this goal, Poe must also utilize the methods of logos, ethos, and pathos. Poe argues that logically, someone with a more capable intellect and sounder mind than him would view the events he is about to relate as commonplace, without horror. He states that his immediate purpose for writing this selection is to describe a series of "mere household events." But the question arises in the reader’s mind, why would the author describe mundane events? The fact is, that to the author, the events have caused great terror but the examination of the reader may only uncover "mere household events." With this choice of words, the reader is intrigued and begins to wonder if his or her own assessment of the events will contrast with the author’s horror, like the author assumes will happen.
The theme of the double is also seen often in Poe works, including "William Wilson."
Adaptations
In film
"The Black Cat" was adapted as the middle segment of Roger Corman's trilogy film Tales of Terror in 1962. Although the overall film was cast with Vincent Price as the lead, in this segment, he was in a supporting role with Peter Lorre as the main character. The 1934 film Maniac also loosely adapts the story. This version follows a former vaudeville actor who kills a doctor and takes the doctor's place to hide his crime.
In television
"The Black Cat" is the eleventh episode of the second season of Masters of Horror. The plot essentially retells the short story in a semi-autobiographical manner, with Poe himself undergoing a series of events involving a black cat which he used to inspire the story of the same name.
References
- ^ Cleman, John. "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense" collected in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom, ed. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. p. 73. ISBN 0791061736
External links
- Project Gutenberg: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2
- Complete Text at E A Poe Society of Baltimore
- Full text on PoeStories.com with hyperlinked vocabulary words.
- The Poe Decoder: The Black Cat
- Free audio recording of "The Black Cat" from Librivox