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Patricia Regina Vieira

Professor Dr. Anelise Reich Corseuil
Literatura em Lngua Inglesa I
10 July 2014
The Black Cat: The Madness of the Narrator
Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known writer of Horror stories. The dark part of Poe
was recognized as Dark Romantic due to his writings style. This analysis aims to show,
through the main character, some characteristics of this subgenre present in the short
story The Black Cat, written by Poe in 1943.
Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre from the nineteenth century which was
common in America. Works within the dark romantic perspective were based by
Transcendentalism, yet it did not hold the entirely ideas of Transcendentalism, which
basic was a belief in the spiritual essence of the man and his souls ability to transcend
the physical (Chandran, 3). Dark romantics works explore the dark side of human
experience, such as death, nightmares, ghosts, fears, and bring themes of horror, the
macabre, tragedy and the supernatural.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of major famous writers of the Dark Romanticism. In his
poems and short stories, Poe wrote about this dark side of the humans, worked with the
obscurity of the human mind and its affinity towards the unknown, the supernatural. This
passage in Ukessays demonstrated why Poe was recognized as a dark romanticism:
A Dark Romantic was identified for valuing instinct over logic and reason
as well as thought that human events had definite signs and symbols
behind them. Edgar Allen Poe used the literary skill of symbolism very

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well, of which Dark Romantics were identified to use quite regularly (Poe
3, 1981). Dark Romantics were recognized to explore the dark side of an
issue, but Poe was particularly known for this for the reason that he had a
very mad and unbalanced psyche. Poe made use of conflicts and bad
occurrences from his own life to assist add him in his dark and sinister
writings. (Ukessays.com)
The main character of The Black Cat is the narrator. At first, he describes
himself as calmly, lovely; From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of
my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the
jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my
parents with a great variety of pets. (Poe, 320) He continues like this in his manhood
and had a black cat named Pluto, his favorite pet and playmate. However, after several
years, he changed. Day by day, he grew more moody, more irritable and more
regardless of the feelings of others. He became an alcoholic and a violent man. He
neglected all of his pets, except Pluto, even his wife was offered danger by him. This,
however, does not take much longer.
One night he returns home drunk and is bitten by the cat and, in a lamp of rage,
he cuts one of the cats eyes of. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew
myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and
a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. (Poe
321-322) This part, it is possible to perceive the characters psychological state start to
change, his madness begins to take control of his body and mind, though the feeling of
guilty still remains the day after his act. When the cat starts to avoid him due to fear,

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the spirit of perversness takes control and in cold blood he hangs the cat in a tree and
kills it.
With this character, Poe shows how madness can take control and poisons of the
human mind, show the weakness of the human being:
Bthe spirit of perversness. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I
am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of
the primitive impulses of the human heart one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who
has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action,
for no other reason than because he knows he should not? (Poe, 322)
The narrator, a few days after killing Pluto, finds another cat, a black cat, and
takes it home. The new cat resembles Pluto very much, except for a splotch of white
hair nearly the region of the breast. This new cat seems to be a personification of Pluto;
in the next morning, he realizes that the cat does not have an eye, the same eye he
cuts of in Pluto. And the mark of white hair in the cats breast corresponds exactly as
gallows. These two facts are enough to drive him completely mad and out of his mind.
He decides to kill the cat again, but this time with an axe, the moment he goes to kill it,
his wife interferes and dies with the buried axe in her brain.
The following moment, instead of feeling guilty, he surprises the reader with an
utterly coldness and serenity, planning how to dispose the wifes body without no one
realizing. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief
which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its
appearance during the night and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into

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the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder
upon my soul! (Poe, 328) The cat disappears along with his wife, but the death of his
wife does not affect him; he feels free, because, finally, the beast, as he refers to the
cat, is gone. Once again I breathed as a free-man. The monster, in terror, had fled the
premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of
my dark deed disturbed me but little. (Poe, 328)
Within one character Poe is able to demonstrate the dark side of humans, the
weakness linked with the alcohol addiction, the madness, the violence and the lack of
guiltiness. By the other hand, the cat is a symbolism, the second cat, specifically, is the
supernatural existence. Its appearance seems to be the personification of the narrators
unconsciousness, which fallows him until the last moment when it shows itself on the
corpse behind the wall.
Its possible to relate the end of the story to the supernatural, due to the fact that
the end is both rationally possible and tremendously unlikely; since the cat could live in
the basement walls, but it is difficult to believe that it would remain silently in the wall for
a long time or go unnoticed by the overly meticulous narrator. Nevertheless, it may not
be able to confirm that the cat sitting above the corpse is real; it may be only a
projection of the narrators insanity and his guilty over floating.

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Works Cited
Chandran, Mini. Topics in Literary Movements - Dark Romanticism (2008) In:
<http://web.stanford.edu/~kvenkat/documents/eng435.pdf>. Web. 7.05.2014
"Dark Romanticism And The Black Cat English Literature Essay." UKessays.com. 11
2013. All Answers Ltd. In: <http://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/darkromanticism-and-the-black-cat-english-literature-essay.php?cref=1>. Web. 7.05.2014
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Black Cat. Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. David
Galloway. Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd, 1967. 320-329.