1. THE BLACK CAT
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
1843
BY
INSTRUCTOR. AHMED G. MOHAISEN
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FOR HUMANITIES – DEPT. OF ENGLISH
UNIVERSITY OFANBAR
2. CONTENTS
• Edgar Allan Poe: Life & works
• Plot summary
• The Black Cat Character List
• Themes
• Symbols and Allusions
• The black cat as a gothic story
• Irony
• Perverseness
3. EDGAR ALLAN POE: LIFE & WORKS
• Edgar Allan Poe born in, (1809 –1849) he was an American writer, poet, editor, and
literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories
• He is the father of the short story
• He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States
• He considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre
• Edgar Allan Poe was a writer and critic famous for his dark, mysterious poems and
stories, including ‘The Raven,’ ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart. His imaginative
storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story
• The cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain
congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents
4. EDGAR ALLAN POE: LIFE & WORKS
• By the time he was three years old, both of Poe’s parents had died, leaving him in the care
of his godfather, John Allan
• In 1836, while working as an editor at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond,
Virginia, Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm
• Poe lost his job at the Messenger due to his heavy drinking, and the couple moved to
Philadelphia, where Poe worked as an editor at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and
Graham’s Magazine. He became known for his direct and incisive criticism, as well as for
dark horror stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
• . In 1844, Poe moved to New York City. He scored a spectacular success the following
year with his poem “The Raven
5. EDGAR ALLAN POE: LIFE & WORKS
• His wife Virginia fell ill and died of tuberculosis in early 1847. His wife’s death drove
Poe even deeper into alcoholism and drug abuse.
• After becoming involved with several women, Poe returned to Richmond in 1849 and got
engaged to an old flame. Before the wedding, however, Poe died suddenly. Though
circumstances are somewhat unclear, it appeared he began drinking at a party in Baltimore
and disappeared, only to be found incoherent in a gutter three days later. Taken to the
hospital, he died on October 7, 1849, at age 40.
6. PLOT SUMMARY
• ‘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.
• First, a brief summary of the plot of ‘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
• 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 narrator – possessed by a sudden rage – took a pen-knife from his pocket and pull out
one of the cat’s eyes
7. PLOT SUMMARY
• 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 house. Setting foot in the ruins, the narrator finds the strange
figure of a gigantic hanging cat on one of the walls.
• the narrator declares 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, and
resembles Pluto in every respect, except that this cat has some white among its black fur.
8. PLOT SUMMARY
• The narrator took this cat to his house, 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 by walling it up with bricks in the cellar, 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., the narrator’s story comes to an end
9. CHARACTERS LIST
• Unnamed Narrator
• The narrator is another of Poe’s unnamed and unreliable men driven to madness.
• The Narrator's Wife
• Pluto
• The Second Black Cat
• The Police
10. THEMES
• Man’s descent into insanity
• The ill-effects of alcoholism
• Supernatural beliefs
• Guilt
• Love and hate
• Murder, violence and death
11. SYMBOLS AND ALLUSIONS
• Traditionally, black cats symbolize death and darkness together with the gloomy future that the
narrator is about to experience.
• Even his wife, who does not believe in superstition, “made frequent allusion to the ancient
popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 4).
• Additionally, on top of the cat being black, it is named Pluto. In Greek mythology, Pluto was
the Roman god of death
• The cat is also half-blinded, which symbolizes the narrator’s irrationality probable due to
excessive drinking.
• The narrator might also be blinded by his guilty conscience.
12. SYMBOLS AND ALLUSIONS
• After the black cat is killed, another one appears, but with a white spot, which troubles the
narrator. He confesses that the white spot on the new cat is now the “representation of an
object that I shudder to name…I loathed, and dreaded…the image of a hideous – of a ghastly
thing—of the gallows! – oh, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime – of agony
and of death” (Poe 10).
• After the black cat is killed, another one appears, but with a white spot, which troubles the
narrator. He confesses that the white spot on the new cat is now the “representation of an
object that I shudder to name…I loathed, and dreaded…the image of a hideous – of a ghastly
thing—of the gallows! – oh, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime – of agony
and of death” (Poe 10).
13. SYMBOLS AND ALLUSIONS
• The white patch is a symbol of the narrator’s evil spirit, which cannot be killed – it has
become part of his life, and it will haunt him into eternity.
14. THE BLACK CAT AS A GOTHIC STORY
• The term Gothic fiction refers to a style of writing that is characterized by elements of
fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality,
and very high emotion. These emotions can include fear and suspense.
• Gothic settings include buildings like castles, graveyards, caves, religious houses. They
are often old, decaying buildings, usually set in remote, hidden places such as the
wilderness of a forest or in the isolation of the mountains.
15. THE BLACK CAT AS A GOTHIC STORY
• Poe vividly presents elements of the supernatural, the evil side of human nature and
madness, which place “The Black Cat” in the gothic genre. Thrill, suspense and horror
are often evoked by gothic elements
• The black cats living with the narrator appear to be supernatural. The narrator’s wife
confronts him with this idea old folk that regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.
• The second black cat that comes to him features two strange elements: like Pluto, it has
only one eye, as well as a white mark shaped into gallows. This could be a strange kind of
mystical penalty for killing Pluto.
16. THE BLACK CAT AS A GOTHIC STORY
• Another typical topic in gothic pieces of writing is the evil side of the human nature and
the appearance of madness. The narrator claims that he is not mad at the beginning of the
story, whereas obviously he is mad due to his transformation from a tender-hearted and a
true animal lover to an abuser and killer of his pets and his beloved wife. He commits
perverse deeds and excuses himself by claiming that that some of this perverseness lives
in all of us.
• Another gothic element that Poe applies in “The Black Cat” is choosing a gothic
surrounding, particularly the cellar of the house, where the narrator hid his wife’s body.
The narrator describes the house as an “old building”
17. THE BLACK CAT AS A GOTHIC STORY
• By describing the cellar in detail, the author creates an image in the reader’s mind
that evokes mystery.
18. IRONY
• The first form of irony is situational where the narrator mentions that he is a humane and
timid person. As a child, he was noted for his docility and humanistic disposition. His
“tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions”
(Poe 3).
• Ironically, the same person, who once loved animals and spent most of the time caressing
and feeding them, becomes a murderer. This turn of events is out of the ordinary – it is
ironic. Additionally, he does not kill animals and people for any reasonable cause, but for
the sheer thrill of doing it.
19. IRONY
• The narrator opens his narration by saying that his purpose is to tell the world “a series of
mere household events” (Poe 3). However, as the story progresses, the audience discovers
that the events are out of the ordinary. He kills the black cat and takes the audience
through the darkest places of his life.
• At the end of the story, the narrator is confident that the police will not find the hidden
body of his dead wife, as he has stuck it between the walls of the cellar. He brags,
“Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no
embarrassment whatever” (Poe 13).
• The narrator is assured that the police cannot find out about his secrets. Ironically, noises
coming from the very wall that he trusts to keep his secrets lead to the discovery of the
hidden body
20. PERVERSENESS
• The narrator’s excuse for his behavior is the spirit of “perverseness,” or doing something
evil simply because it is evil. However, we cannot take him at his word and it is more
likely that his own psychology is to blame
• The narrator also tries to explain away his deeds and rationalize them, which complicates
his defense
• Every human has two opposite sides inside himself, goodness and evilness. It is a matter
of control, if the goodness wins upon perverseness, then human tends to do good deeds.
On the other hand, if the spirit of perverseness wins, evil side drives man into committing
evil deeds. The narrator says it was this inner demon that brought about his downfall
