The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe (General English - Semester 1)

THE BLACK CAT – THEME






  1. HOME

    "Home sweet home" is supposed to be a place of safety and security, but it becomes dark and tragic place of madness and murder. Edgar Allan Poe's horror classic "The Black Cat" offers a sinister portrait of the home. Things seem alright in the beginning. A young couple, animal lovers both, get married and fill their home with "birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat" (3). But something, or several somethings, go terribly wrong. The home becomes a scene of domestic abuse and murder. The nameless narrator details the long, slow, brutal destruction of his home life, at his own hands. His story is a gruesome confession, written from his new home, a prison cell.

2. VIOLENCE

In "The Black Cat" the unnamed narrator offers us a parade of violent acts. Eye gouging, hanging, axing – these are the gruesome highlights. Until the end of the story, when somebody is killed, the detailed accounts of violence are focused on Pluto, the black cat who moves from pampered pet to persecuted beast. The violence the unnamed narrator practices against his wife and the other pets is rather vague. Yet, we get a pretty clear picture of what is happening. And by the end of the story the narrator has completely destroyed his family, and perhaps, completely destroyed himself in the process. In this horror classic, violence is an insidious beast that creeps, spreads, and grows uncontrollably, destroying all the bodies and minds it touches. “I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!”

3. DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

In some stories (think stories by Ernest Hemingway) drinking has both positive and negative effects on the drinkers. Not so in "The Black Cat." The unnamed narrator of this grim tale claims he began abusing his wife and pets when his drinking got out of control, wrecking his personality. Some readers think this is a "temperance" narrative, a popular genre in Poe's day. "Temperance" in this context means "sobriety." The Temperance Movement focused on educating the public on the perceived dangers of drinking, and pushing legislature prohibiting the manufacture, use, and sale of alcohol. In a temperance narrative alcohol is the major issue, and is to blame for all the bad things that happen in the story. Here, alcohol fades out of the story just when things get bad, suggesting that alcohol is only one of many factors in the narrator's moral breakdown. “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.”





4. FREEDOM AND CONFINEMENT

"The Black Cat," a claustrophobic tale of marital life gone wrong, offers a distinct movement from freedom to confinement. We meet the narrator already in his prison cell, writing, to free himself from his bonds – the literal bonds of the cell, and the bondage confining his mind and heart. How he became so trapped is the subject of his writing and the reason why he has taken the pen to the page. We learn how he traps his wife and pets in a cycle of violence and abuse. As things go from bad to worse, the physical spaces the characters inhabit shrink. While the man's story begins in a house of wealth and comfort (or so he implies) it ends in brick tomb in the cellar of a rundown building.


5. TRANSFORMATION

Disturbing physical and psychological transformations – often for the worst – are characteristic of most horror and Gothic tales. In "The Black Cat" some form of transformation occurs in nearly every paragraph. For the narrator, these changes are psychological. After he gets married, his personality spirals deeper and deeper toward the dark side, cruelly abusing his pets and his wife. His initially happy home life is turned upside down, and everyone involved is adversely affected and changed for the worse. Like many horror stories, "The Black Cat" also offers the possibility of supernatural change, though this might just be a figment of his imagination, or an excuse to deflect blame from his crime. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.”

6. JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT

Since the unnamed narrator of "The Black Cat" is writing from his prison cell, we can be sure that justice and judgment are on his mind. In the 1830s, when Poe was writing, the wheels of legal justice couldn't begin to turn until our narrator went too far and killed his wife. At the time, it wasn't illegal to abuse one's wife or animals. The story questions ideas of judgment and justice, and reflects the fraught and turbulent state of the US justice system in a time when rights for women, African Americans, animals, children, the mentally ill, and convicted murderers were hotly contested issues. Since domestic abuse happens every day, in spite of the law, "The Black Cat" still finds a receptive audience, over 160 years after it first appeared on the literary scene.

QUESTION:

  1. Does this story provide an inroad into discussions of domestic violence? Why or why not?
  2. How did you react to the violence in the story? Was there a particular act of violence that struck you? If so, which one?
  3. Do you think alcohol is to blame for the man's problems?
  4. Who is the most trapped character in the story? Why do you think so? What are some of the things that trap this character?
  5. Do you think the narrator is insane? If so, should this matter in terms of how he is sentenced?
  6. Do you believe there are supernatural transformations at work in this story?


       








Comments

  1. Anonymous5 October 2017 at 09:53

    Good that u have posted those questions but during exams students try to answer questions based the summary u have given just give the answers too then just wait and see how will ur students perform in the mid and end sems

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown6 August 2018 at 09:06

      Are you trying to say that just this "summary" isn't enough?

      Delete
  2. Hindustan Institute of Maritime Training4 December 2020 at 02:42


    Interesting article! Thank you for sharing them! I hope you will continue to have similar posts to share with everyone.

    Maritime and Coastguard Agency UK approved courses

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Surgeon At 2 am (1) - Sylvia Plath (General English - Semester 1)

Surgeon at 2 am by Sylvia Plath Introduction Sylvia Plath was  a  popular Pulitzer Prize winning author best known for her works “The Bell Jar”, “Colossus” and “Ariel”. Plath is commended for her in-depth abstract literature. Sylvia Plath was a reflective intelligent poet who was affected with depression which led to her committing suicide at age 31. Sylvia Plath faced hospitalisation for a  miscarriage and appendicitis. These two incidents caused her to visualise herself in the brain of a surgeon. Sylvia Plath was hospitalised in ST Pancras hospital in London and all her observations are based on this experience. Sylvia Plath also suffered from severe mental breakdowns and clinical depression due to a bad marriage and had tried to commit suicide previously. This poem was written two years before she died. Summary The poem starts from the personal narrative of a male surgeon and description of the atmosphere surrounding the surgery. The surgeon is de...
Read more

The Surgeon At 2 am (2) - Sylvia Plath (General English - Semester 1)

Introduction A Commentary on Plath's The Surgeon at 2am Fought with the stress of depression combined with the pain of a recent miscarriage, Plath was preoccupied with the concept of hospitalisation when writing 'The Surgeon at 2am'. Taking on the persona of a male surgeon, the controlling role to her more passive role as patient, she explores the concept as the surgeon as master and alludes to a higher power in explaining the apparent magic and complexity of the human body. The title of this poem introduces us to its major subject matter, as is typical of Plath's poetry. The first two lines of the first stanza appear subjective and clinical, introducing us to the idea of the surgeon being a man of science. The line 'hygienic as heaven' also alludes to death, a commonplace occurrence in any hospital. This is followed through by the reference to the death of the microbes. This also gives an air of control to the poem and allows the reader to understand the co...
Read more

Gunga Din - Rudyard Kipling (General English - Semester 1)

GUNGA DIN Summary The poem is told by a British soldier; he is expressing admiration for a native water-bearer who loses his life not long after he saves the soldier's. The soldier tells his audience that they might talk about beer and gin while they are stationed out here, and partake in small fights, but they can only lick the boots of "'im that's got it". In India's sunny land where he served England, the finest of the "blackfaced" crew was Gunga Din , a regimental bhisti (water-carrier). Everyone always ordered him to get them water and called him names, such as "You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din!" His uniform was nothing much to speak of, and his only field equipment was a goatskin water-bag and a rag. When the soldiers would lie about in the heat, sweating, they would call out "O brother" to Din, and call him a heathen, asking him where he had been and threatening to hit him unless he filled up their water bo...
Read more