the black cat

Black Cat

The story the Black Cat is a narrative of a man who at length of the story gradually loss the kind-heartedness, docile, and humane character in him. The loss of the likeable characteristics in him caused him to commit cruelties and crime, for no valid reason but loss of sanity, against the innocents in the story.

The narrator, the main character of the story, tells of the gruesome events that happened in his own household - events that he himself had committed. The story began with the narrator describing himself as a man of humane disposition, with tender-heart, and has a grown passion and love for animals since his childhood. He described the pleasure that he gets from the loyalty and friendship given to him by his pets. The narrator's wife, who was not so much different from him, supported him in his passion of caring for animals.

The story started to have a twist, from having a good-natured protagonist to having a psychologically distressed character, when the narrator started to tell unlikable events that were caused by the worsening changes in his temperament and personality. He became a moody and irritated person which negatively affected how he treated his pets, causing him to maltreat them in different ways. However, for his favorite pet, Pluto, a pure black cat, the narrator was still able to control his cruelty. Soon, nevertheless, as the narrator's loss of reason and sanity becomes worse, almost turning into madness, Pluto similarly felt the changes in his ill-tempered master. One day, in fear of him, it had inflicted a wound into the narrator's hand when trying to slip away. This caused a somehow demonic fury in the narrator that he carried out a cruel pain to Pluto by cutting out one of its eyes.

A day after the horror of the narrator's deed against the cat, guilt but vague remorse was all that he felt. There was a continuous worsening in his character, in which reason had totally no more place in his mind and heart. His former fondness for Pluto turned into anguish and vain which made him soon carry out a more horrific act against the cat. This again, was done for no reason at all but growing perverseness in him. The narrator hanged Pluto to its death.

One day, while passing time, the narrator saw a black cat almost resembling Pluto except that it had a large white splotch on its breast. Having no owner, the cat, through its own will, had domesticated itself in the narrator's house. Soon, the narrator's wife became fond of the cat while the cat similarly had grown fond of the couple. Contrasting to such fondness is the narrator's growing dislike for the cat as if something was tempting him to blow the cat away as what he did to Pluto.

Wretchedness to the life of the narrator seemed inevitable. Despite of trying not to hurt the cat and not to commit a crime again, he was brought into fury by the cat when he was almost thrown headlong from the stairs as the cat was following him. He almost hit the cat with an axe but his wife was able to grab his hand and prevent him from doing so. Angered by the interference, the narrator instead hit the axe to his wife killing her at an instant.

The narrator buried his wife within the strong walls of his house, inserting her body inside the wall and covering it with bricks making sure that the wall will look as old as it was as if it has never been altered. After cleaning all the evidences of his crime, he searched for the cat to kill it. However, to no avail, he did not find it.

During the police's search for his wife in his house, the narrator almost got away from the suspicion of killing her because no evidence can be found. However, the cat was still there to put him into trouble. The narrator did not know that he walled the cat with his wife's body. Before the police even left from the narrator's house, the cat made a horrible cry from within the wall which soon revealed the narrator's wife's body.

Thesis

The Black Cat shows that even the most docile person, having the most humane dispositions, as how the narrator of the story was, can have the capacity to commit violence that no one may have ever imagined.

Discussion

Poe constructed the story in a way that the narrator seems to be already in his sane mind while telling his experiences of domestic violence. Sane but not very sane still; this is how a reader may think once he re-reads the first paragraph on how he describes his experiences.

In their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --have destroyed me...To me, they have presented little but Horror --to many they will seem less terrible than baroques."

The events in the story, particularly the cutting of the cat's one eye, the killing of the cat, and the killing of the narrator's wife, are all horrible deeds. And yet, as the narrator introduces his story, he considered that all his deeds have presented him with little horror -- an instance that may cause a reader think that only a person with insane mind will not be greatly affected by such horror.

The narrator's recount of the drastic transformations that occurred in him is perhaps one way of Poe to tell his readers how our mind, if we let it control us, can lead us to wretchedness. From the following descriptions of a weak and tame personality,

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." To the following dreadful deeds of that "used-to-be weak and tame" person, 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! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."

Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain." one can't help but feel weak and sorry for the narrator - how his life was put into waste. With the drastic transformation in the narrator's personality, Poe did an effective way of affecting the reader's feelings. From my experience of reading the story, aside from feeling sorry for the narrator, I also felt fear for myself - fear of the thought that no one knows when insanity may hit - fear of the possibility of experiencing the same gruesome consequences that happened to the narrator as caused by unstable sanity and perverseness.