Edgar Allan Poe: life, works, and literary influence

"The Black Cat" appears to contain a number of themes that fascinated its author Edgar Allan Poe, such as reincarnation, perversity (i.e. a form of weirdness) and retribution and/or revenge. In the tale itself, Poe mentions that the main protagonist (an unnamed narrator) has experienced "a series of mere household events" that have "tortured" and destroyed him (234), due to having Pluto, a black cat, as a pet, a most beautiful animal, coal-black all over, taken in by the narrator and his wife. This unknown narrator, perhaps Poe himself, seems to have a serious problem with alcohol, for he states that at times he is driven insane with drink and ends up doing things that go against his morals. He calls alcohol "the Fiend Intemperance" which means that alcohol, at least for the narrator, is like a fiend or a demon that attacks the mind and leads to utter destruction. The narrator then becomes drunk and cuts out the eye of the black cat with a pen knife, whereby he once again "plunged into excess and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed" (235). As the cat recovers from his horrible wounds, the narrator becomes extremely melancholic and upon getting drunk again, he takes the black cat, slips a noose around its neck and hangs it from the limb of a tree. Then, his house burns down under mysterious circumstances and once the fire is extinguished, the narrator sees the image of the dead black cat set against some plaster left over from the fire. After the fire, the narrator obtains another black cat that is very similar to Pluto except for a spot of white between his front legs. For some strange reason, the narrator comes to hate this new cat and when he tries to kill it, his wife steps in, trying to stop him, but he kills her with an axe and then proceeds to bury her body behind the wall in his cellar. Much like the narrator in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator in "The Black Cat" cannot live with himself and is slowly driven mad by his subconscious mind. When the police

show up at his house, they immediately go to the cellar and quickly discover the body of the narrator's dead wife behind the wall. However, Poe has thrown in a twist ending for the reader-the black cat is sitting on the head of the dead woman which prompts the narrator to explain "I had walled the monster up within the tomb!" (236). Obviously, Poe was fascinated with the mysterious and the macabre and knew quite a bit about human psychology. The narrator in "The Black Cat" is certainly mentally disturbed which appears to be linked to his use of alcohol. Throughout this story, there is a definite sense that the narrator might be Poe himself, due to the fact that in his own life, the use of alcohol led to many difficulties related to employment and being accepted in certain social circles. However, the narrator in "The Black Cat" is definitely unhinged, especially due to killing his wife in cold blood and then burying her corpse behind a brick wall. He also tries to cover up his crime when questioned by the police, but his shame and guilt over killing his wife gets the best of him, thus leading to his confession of murder. Poe's use of grotesque images and very descriptive narration is best exemplified in "The Masque of the Red Death," published in 1842 which concerns Prince Prospero and his court in an unidentified location somewhere in Central Europe or perhaps Italy. Many scholars consider this tale as Poe's masterpiece, for it illustrates his supreme artistry as one of the literary giants of American literature in the 19th century. In this tale, the plot revolves around the supernatural, but the main events are based on historical truth. His "Red Death" as it appears in the title is not related to the "Black Death," a form of plague that killed millions of people during the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe, but is a metaphor for consumption, also known as tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs that killed Poe's wife Virginia at the age of twenty-seven in 1846.