literary analysis essay the black cat

A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘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 who’s rather difficult to like. You can read ‘The Black Cat’ here . Below we’ve offered some notes towards an analysis of this troubling but powerful tale.

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. When he married, he and his wife acquired a number of pets, including a black cat, named Pluto. But as the years wore on, the narrator became more irritable and prone to snap.

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 animal bit him slightly on the hand, and the narrator – possessed by a sudden rage – took a pen-knife from his pocket and gouged out one of the cat’s eyes.

Although the cat seems to recover from this, 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 smouldering remains of the house. Setting foot in the ruins, the narrator finds the strange figure of a gigantic hanging cat on one of the walls, the dead cat having become embedded in the plaster (the narrator surmises 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, a cat that has shown up seemingly out of nowhere, and resembles Pluto in every respect, except that this cat has some white among its black fur. The cat takes a shine to the narrator, so he and his wife take it in as their pet.

However, 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, 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. And with this revelation, the narrator’s story comes to an end.

The narrator piques our interest at the beginning of ‘The Black Cat’ by announcing that he dies tomorrow; it becomes clear that he is to be executed (by hanging, aptly, given the fate of his first pet cat) for the murder of his wife.

The ending of ‘The Black Cat’ suggests that a productive analysis between this story and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ might yield a fruitful discussion. For one, both stories are narrated by murderers who conceal the dead body of their victim, only to have that body discovered at the end of the story.

It was Robert A. Heinlein, a later American author who made his name in the genre that Poe helped to create (science fiction), who remarked: ‘How we behave toward cats here below determines our place in heaven.’ What drives human beings to commit horrible deeds of pointless sadistic cruelty towards defenceless animals?

Whenever we read upsetting stories in the newspapers about people who have committed violent acts upon pets for no discernible reason, we have probably wondered this. Are they all psychopathic?

The narrator of ‘The Black Cat’ seems not to be – for he can recognise that his violent cruelty towards his cat is sadistic and vile, and even recoils in horror when his conscience is pricked and he realises that he is doing wrong. He attributes his violent behaviour towards the cat to ‘perverseness’, arguing that we all do things from time to time purely because we know they’re wrong.

Yet even in the face of his horrific treatment of Pluto – the cat’s name is shared with the Roman god of the Underworld – and his apparent desire to atone for his cruelty with the second pet cat, he ends up lapsing into his old ways and tries to kill the creature for no reason other than that he comes to be annoyed and irritated by it.

But of course, the mention of gin in the story offers a clue as to the cause of the narrator’s violence and irritation. What could cause an otherwise pleasant and humane youth, who grew up loving all animals, to turn into such a brute towards them – and, in time, towards a fellow human being? One answer suggests itself: alcohol.

‘The Black Cat’ can be analysed in light of Poe’s dislike of alcohol: he struggled with alcohol and was prone to drinking bouts which caused him to act erratically, so he knew well the dangers of over-indulging in drink until it begins to alter the drinker’s moods.

The narrator’s growing irritation towards both cats may, then, be a result of his overuse of alcohol. Shortly before his death in 1849 – possibly brought on by the effects of alcohol – Poe became a vocal supporter of temperance. It may be that ‘The Black Cat’ should be analysed as being, among other things, an earlier attempt to dramatise the dangers of drink.

10 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’”

The discussion about cruelty to animals makes me, a vegan, raise the question: how does anyone accept the horrible cruelty perpetrated on animals by the thousands every day. I just don’t know how that is acceptable when we understand in reading this story that the mistreatment of one cat is grounds for retribution.

I KNOW RIGHT, TF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE ANYMORE

A fair analysis, though I’m not sure it reflects how funny “The Black Cat” can be. At one point, the narrator theorises that the dead cat has been thrown through his window “probably with the view of arousing me from sleep.” A beautiful mental picture.

Also, some of the narrator’s melodramatic anguish sounds funnier when you realise that he is delivering these lines holding a cat.

Incredible analysis. It’s hard to read a poem like this when I am such an animal lover, yet the the mind of human beings who do twisted things to others always turns me into a researcher. I do seek to understand. Repelled and Fascinated at the same time!

Thank you! I know what you mean by repelled and fascinated. As a cat-lover I find it hard to read the account of what happens to the poor creature. But as you say, Poe’s tale offers us a chance to understand (not the same as justifying) his erratic and violent behaviour. A study of a troubled human mind…

Exactly. My nature is to understand first…

Poor first cat. Hangings all very well and might seem to fit the crime, but it’s not an eye for an eye, is it, so could have been more appropriate. But surely his wife’s death was accidental, she threw herself in front of the axe, so no punishment justified.

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E. Poe’s “The Black Cat” Literary Analysis Essay

“I had walled the monster up within the tomb” — this chilling quote comes from Poe’s famous story. Read this The Black Cat literary analysis to learn more about The Black Cat literary devices and themes.

Introduction

The black cat literary analysis: themes, figurative language in the black cat, foreshowing, works cited.

Alan Poe is one of the writers who advanced dark romanticism in the nineteenth century in America. This subgenre evolved from transcendental philosophy, and it sought to explore the dark side of events or issues. Poe is known for his mad and unbalanced psyche in writing dark and sinister works mainly due to his childhood experiences. The Black Cat is one such dark writing where Poe uses terror and depravity to explore the dark side of a home and how things can go awry. In the story, the narrator starts by highlighting his childhood and his undying love and compassion for animals.

He marries someone equally loving, and they both share many common attributes and life interests. They own a black cat named Pluto, and life seems normal until the narrator sinks into alcoholism, which changes him forever. He starts mistreating his wife and pets without tenable reasons. Ultimately, he kills Pluto, his once-beloved pet, and his wife suffers the same fate later in the story. In The Black Cat , Poe uses metaphor, paradox, symbolism, foreshadowing, irony, repetition, and similes to explore the themes of death, violence, and terror.

Throughout the story of The Black Cat , Poe explores the themes of violence, death, and terror exclusively until the end of the narration. Murder and death are central to the story as the narrator descends into insanity due to alcoholism. The narrator kills his favorite pet, Pluto, and appears to enjoy the process. He parades the audience with a series of gory acts, such as gouging eyes, hanging, and the axing of the innocent cat. Ultimately, he kills his wife in a rage of fury while attempting to kill the second cat that he adopted after murdering Pluto. However, the audience wonders why the author chose to focus on violence, murder, and terror in this story. Poe’s life experiences contributed largely to his obsession with dark romanticism. According to Pruette,

The life of Edgar Allan Poe might be considered an unhappy record of that “disaster” which “followed fast and followed faster” this man of brilliant capacities till it drove him into opposition with most of the world, deprived him of the love he so inordinately craved, paralyzed his creative abilities, seduced him to seek a vague nepenthe in the use of drugs and stimulants, and, its relentless purpose achieved, cast him aside, a helpless wreck, to die from the darkened tragedy of a Baltimore (370).

In other words, in The Black Cat , Poe is retelling his story and how he was mentally tormented by a series of unfortunate occurrences, including the death of his parents and wife. In the story, the narrator becomes an alcoholic, which mirrors the same phenomenon in Poe’s life.

Moldenhauer calls this form of writing “confessional rhetoric,” whereby the narrator-protagonist “introduces or concludes his account with elaborate gestures of self-condemnation, and with dire forecasts of eternal disgrace for his name or perpetual torment for his soul” (285). In The Black Cat , the narrator does not draw a conclusion, and the audience can only assume that he suffered in eternity after the brutal killing of his wife. Poe’s life experiences explain why he chooses to explore the dark side of life in this story by talking about death, terror, and violence.

The Black Cat is rich in metaphors and personification, which are used to underscore how the inner world of the narrator transforms as he sinks into alcoholism and insanity. For instance, the narrator says, “…sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman” (Poe 14). In this case, the narrator is talking about his psychopath tendencies and paranoia, which turned him into a ruthless killer of people and pets dear to him. His guilty conscience is the black cat, which has become a hideous abomination. Additionally, the narrator implies that he would be haunted by his actions forever.

He admits, “I had walled the monster up within the tomb” (Poe 14). The wall mentioned here is for his house, a place where the narrator is supposed to find safety and peace, but he has turned it into a tomb. In other words, his home has become a place for the dead. He has to live with the consequences of his actions, no matter how grim they appear.

Literary Devices in The Black Cat

Symbolism is used extensively in this story, and it underlines hidden messages that contribute to the plot development and the themes of death, violence, and terror. The first symbol is the black cat, which also doubles as the title of the story. 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 or hades or the underworld (Richardson and Bowman 5). The cat is also half-blinded, which symbolizes the narrator’s irrationality, probably due to excessive drinking.

The narrator might also be blinded by his guilty conscience. 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). 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.

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. The other form of irony is dramatic, which occurs at both the start and the end of the story.

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 bizarrely and takes the audience through the darkest places of his life, which is tormenting. 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. The agony of the demons that triumph in the damnation has come back to haunt the narrator.

At the start of the story, the narrator foretells that he is about to take the audience through a wild and unbelievable experience. He is about to die tomorrow, and thus he has to unburden his soul today. He is about to face death after the brutal killing of his wife. He talks about “gallows,” which he sees in the white patch of a new cat. These gallows foreshadow how he will die. He would probably be executed through hanging. The narrator also foreshadows the death of his wife. He says, “At length, I even offered her personal violence” (Poe 4). The author reveals to the audience what is about to happen later in the story, albeit subtly.

The author uses paradox with a parallel structure to prepare the audience, albeit subtly, for the dark story that lies ahead. The narrator says, “For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief” (Poe 3). Paradoxically, the story is “wild” and “homely” at the same time. These phrases are almost antonyms, and juxtaposing them in the same sentence implies that the story he is about to tell is not ordinary. Similarly, in the middle of the story, he references the divine as the “most merciful and most terrible God” (Poe 6). Saying that God is merciful and terrible at the same time underscores the narrator’s madness. This paradox highlights the narrator’s troubled and guilty conscience, which contributes centrally to the themes of terror, murder, and violence.

The Black Cat is a chef-d’oeuvre short story by Edgar Alan Poe, which underscores his obsession with dark romanticism that was popularized in nineteenth-century America. The story is eccentric, whereby a hitherto timid and humane person descends into alcoholism and becomes a monster. He kills his beloved cat and wife and derives pleasure from such heinous acts. The themes of death, violence, and terror stand out conspicuously throughout the story.

The author uses irony, metaphor, symbolism, foreshadowing, and paradox as stylistic devices to develop these themes. Poe wrote such dark stories as a reflection of his life. He experienced the loss of his loved ones, which drove him into alcoholism and lost touch with humanity. Poe uses confessional rhetoric to mirror his life experiences in his gothic stories as part of advancing dark romanticism.

Moldenhauer, Joseph. “Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections between Poe’s Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America , vol. 83, no. 2, 1968, pp. 284-297.

Poe, E. Alan. The Black Cat . 1843. Web.

Pruette, Lorine. “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe.” The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 31, no. 4, 1920, pp. 370-402.

Richardson, Adele, and Laurel Bowman. Hades . Capstone Press, 2003.

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• Poe's Short Stories

Edgar Allan Poe

• Literature Notes
• "The Black Cat"
• Edgar Allan Poe Biography
• About Poe's Short Stories
• Summary and Analysis
• "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
• "The Purloined Letter"
• "The Tell-Tale Heart"
• "The Cask of Amontillado"
• "William Wilson"
• "The Pit and the Pendulum"
• "The Masque of the Red Death"
• Critical Essays
• Edgar Allan Poe and Romanticism
• Poe's Critical Theories
• Cite this Literature Note

Summary and Analysis "The Black Cat"

More than any of Poe's stories, "The Black Cat" illustrates best the capacity of the human mind to observe its own deterioration and the ability of the mind to comment upon its own destruction without being able to objectively halt that deterioration. The narrator of "The Black Cat" is fully aware of his mental deterioration, and at certain points in the story, he recognizes the change that is occurring within him, and he tries to do something about it, but he finds himself unable to reverse his falling into madness.

In Poe's critical essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," he wrote about the importance of creating a unity or totality of effect in his stories. By this, he meant that the artist should decide what effect he wants to create in a story and in the reader's emotional response and then proceed to use all of his creative powers to achieve that particular effect: "Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart or the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?"

In "The Black Cat," it is obvious that the chief effect that Poe wanted to achieve was a sense of absolute and total perverseness — "irrevocable . . . PERVERSENESS." Clearly, many of the narrator's acts are without logic or motivation; they are merely acts of perversity.

In virtually all of Poe's tales, we know nothing about the narrator's background; this particular story is no exception. In addition, it is akin to "The Tell-Tale Heart" in that the narrator begins his story by asserting that he is not mad ("Yet, mad am I not — ") and, at the same time, he wants to place before the world a logical outline of the events that "have terrified — have tortured — have destroyed me." And during the process of proving that he is not mad, we see increasingly the actions of a madman who knows that he is going mad but who, at times, is able to objectively comment on the process of his increasing madness.

In this story, the narrator begins his confession in retrospect, at a time when he was considered to be a perfectly normal person, known for his docility and his humane considerations of animals and people. His parents indulged his fondness for animals, and he was allowed to have many different kinds of pets. Furthermore, he was very fortunate to marry a woman who was also fond of animals. Among the many animals that they possessed was a black cat which they named Pluto. Since his wife often made allusions to the popular notion that all black cats are witches in disguise, the name Pluto (which is the name of one of the gods of the underworld in charge of witches) becomes significant in terms of the entire story. The other popular notion relevant to this story is the belief that a cat has nine lives; this superstition becomes a part of the story when the second black cat is believed to be a reincarnation of the dead Pluto with only one slight but horrible modification — the imprint of the gallows on its breast.

Interestingly, Pluto was the narrator's favorite animal and for several years, there was a very special relationship between the animal and the narrator. Then suddenly (due partly to alcohol), the narrator underwent a significant change. "I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others." To reiterate the comments in the introduction to this section, Poe believed that a man was capable at any time of undergoing a complete and total reversal of personality and of falling into a state of madness at any moment. Here, the narrator undergoes such a change. The effect of this change is indicated when he came home intoxicated, imagined that the beloved cat avoided him, then grasped the cat by its throat and with a pen knife, cut out one of its eyes. This act of perversity is the beginning of several such acts which will characterize the "totality of effect" that Poe wanted to achieve in this story.

The next morning, he writes, he was horrified by what he had done, and in time the cat recovered but now it deliberately avoided the narrator. As the cat continued to avoid the narrator, the spirit of perverseness overcame him again — this time, with an unfathomable longing of the soul to "offer violence . . . to do wrong for the wrong's sake only." Suddenly one morning, he slipped a noose around the neck of the cat and hanged it from the limb of a tree, but even while doing it, tears streamed down his face. He is ashamed of his perversity because he knows that the cat had loved him and had given him no reason to hang it. What he did was an act of pure perversity.

That night, after the cruel deed was executed, his house burned to the ground. Being a rational and analytical person, the narrator refuses to see a connection between his perverse atrocity of killing the cat and the disaster that consumed his house.

Again, we have an example of the mad mind offering up a rational rejection of anything so superstitious that the burning of the house might be retribution for his killing the cat. However, on the following day, he visited the ruins of the house and saw a crowd of people gathered about. One wall, which had just been replastered and was still wet, was still standing. It was the wall just above where his bed had previously stood and engraved into the plaster was a perfect image of the figure of a gigantic cat, and there was a rope about the animal's neck.

Once again, the narrator's mad mind attempts to offer a rational explanation for this phenomena. He believes that someone found the cat's dead body, flung it into the burning house to awaken the narrator, and the burning of the house, the falling of the walls, and the ammonia from the carcass (cats are filled with ammonia; Poe wrote essays on cats, their instincts, their logic, and their habits) — all these factors contributed to the creation of the graven image. But the narrator does not account for the fact that the image is that of a gigantic cat; thus we must assume that the image took on gigantic proportions only within the mind of the narrator.

For months, the narrator could not forget about the black cat, and one night when he was drinking heavily, he saw another black cat that looked exactly like Pluto — except for a splash of white on its breast. Upon inquiry, he found out that no one knew anything about the cat, which he then proceeded to take home with him. The cat became a great favorite of his and his wife. The narrator's perversity, however, caused him to soon change, and the cat's fondness for them began to disgust him. It was at this time that he began to loathe the cat. What increased his loathing of the new cat was that it had, like Pluto, one of its eyes missing. In the mind of the narrator, this cat was obviously a reincarnation of Pluto. He even notes to himself that the one trait that had once distinguished him — a humanity of feeling — had now almost totally disappeared. This is an example, as noted in the introduction, of how the mad man can stand at a distance and watch the process of his own change and madness.

After a time, the narrator develops an absolute dread of the cat. When he discovers that the white splash on its breast, which at first was rather indefinite, had "assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline" and was clearly and obviously a hideous, ghastly, and loathsome image of the gallows, he cries out, "Oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime — of Agony and of Death!" As we were able to do in "The Tell-Tale Heart," here we can assume that the change occurs within the mind of the mad man in the same way that he considers this beast to be a reincarnation of the original Pluto.

One day, as he and his wife were going into the cellar, the cat nearly tripped him; he grabbed an axe to kill it, but his wife arrested the blow. He withdrew his arm and then buried the axe in her brain. This sudden gruesome act is not prepared for in any way. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the narrator loved his wife very deeply. Consequently, this act of perversity far exceeds the hanging of Pluto and can only be accounted for by Poe's theme of the perversity of the narrator's acts.

Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator here realizes that he must get rid of the body. He thought of "cutting the corpse into minute fragments," he says, as did the previous narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart," but rather than dismemberment, he decided to "wall it up in the cellar" in a similar way that Montresor walled up his victim in "The Cask of Amontillado."

The walls next to the projecting chimney lent themselves to this type of interment, and after having accomplished the deed and cleaning up in such a way that nothing was detectable, the narrator decided to put the cat to death. Unaccountably, it had disappeared. After three days, the narrator decided that the "monster of a cat" had disappeared forever; he was now able to sleep soundly in spite of the foul deed that he had done. This lack of guilt is certainly a change from what his feelings were at the beginning of the story.

On the fourth day, a party of police unexpectedly arrives to inspect the premises. As in "The Tell-Tale Heart," when the police arrive unexpectedly, we never know what motivated the police to come on a search. And in the same way, the narrator here is overconfident; he delights in the fact that he has so cleverly and so completely concealed his horrible crime that he welcomes an inspection of the premises.

However, here, in an act of insane bravado, he raps so heavily upon the bricks that entomb his wife, that to his abject terror, a "voice from within the tomb" answered. At first, it was a muffled and broken cry, but then it swelled into an "utterly anomalous and inhuman . . . howl . . . a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation."

The police immediately began to tear down the brick wall, and they discover the rotting corpse of the narrator's wife and, standing upon her decayed head was the "hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder . . . I had walled the monster up within the tomb."

The final irony, of course, is that the cat which he had come to so despise — the cat that might have been the reincarnation of Pluto — serves as a figure of retribution against the murderer. By the end of the story, therefore, we can see how the narrator, in commenting on his own actions, convicts himself of the madness which he vehemently declaimed at the beginning of the story.

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"The Black Cat" Study Guide

Edgar Allen Poe's Dark Tale of Descent Into Madness

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"The Black Cat," one of  Edgar Allan Poe 's most memorable stories, is a classic example of the gothic literature genre that debuted in the Saturday Evening Post on August 19, 1843. Written in the form of a first-person narrative, Poe employed multiple themes of insanity, superstition, and alcoholism to impart a palpable sense of horror and foreboding to this tale, while at the same time, deftly advancing his plot and building his characters. It's no surprise that "The Black Cat" is often linked with "The Tell-Tale Heart," since both of Poe's stories share several disturbing plot devices including murder and damning messages from the grave—real or imagined.

Plot Summary

The nameless protagonist/narrator begins his story by letting the readers know that he was once a nice, average man. He had a pleasant home, was married to a pleasant wife, and had an abiding love for animals. All that was to change, however, when he fell under the influence of demon alcohol. The first symptom of his descent into addiction and eventual madness manifests with his escalating maltreatment of the family pets. The only creature to escape the man's initial wrath is a beloved black cat named Pluto, but one night after a serious bout of heavy drinking, Pluto angers him for some minor infraction, and in a drunken fury, the man seizes the cat, which promptly bites him. The narrator retaliates by cutting out one of the Pluto's eyes.

While the cat's wound eventually heals, the relationship between the man and his pet has been destroyed. Eventually, the narrator, filled with self-loathing, comes to detest the cat as a symbol of his own weakness, and in a moment of further insanity, hangs the poor creature by the neck from a tree beside the house where it's left to perish. Shortly thereafter, the house burns down. While the narrator, his wife, and a servant escape, the only thing left standing is a single blackened interior wall—on which, to his horror, the man sees the image of a cat hanging by a noose around its neck. Thinking to assuage his guilt, the protagonist begins searching out a second black cat to replace Pluto. One night, in a tavern, he eventually finds just such a cat, which accompanies him to the house he now shares with his wife, albeit under greatly reduced circumstances.

Soon enough, the madness—abetted by gin—returns. The narrator begins not only to detest the new cat—which is always underfoot—but to fear it. What remains of his reason keeps him from harming the animal, until the day the man's wife asks him to accompany her on an errand to the cellar. The cat runs ahead, nearly tripping his master on the stairs. The man becomes enraged. He picks up an ax, meaning to murder the animal, but when his wife grabs the handle to stop him, he pivots, killing her with a blow to the head.

Rather than break down with remorse, the man hastily hides his wife's body by walling it up with bricks behind a false facade in the cellar. The cat that's been tormenting him seems to have disappeared. Relieved, he begins to think he's gotten away with his crime and all will finally be well–until the police eventually show up to search the house. They find nothing but as they're headed up the cellar stairs preparing to leave, the narrator stops them, and with false bravado, he boasts how well the house is built, tapping on the wall that's hiding the body of his dead wife. From within comes a sound of unmistakable anguish. Upon hearing the cries, the authorities demolish the false wall, only to find the wife's corpse, and on top of it, the missing cat. "I had walled the monster up within the tomb!" he wails—not realizing that in fact, he and not the cat, is the actual villain of the story.

Symbols are a key component of Poe's dark tale, particularly the following ones.

• The black cat:  More than just the title character, the black cat is also an important symbol. Like the bad omen of legend, the narrator believes Pluto and his successor have led him down the path toward insanity and immorality. 
• Alcohol: While the narrator begins to view the black cat as an outward manifestation of everything the narrator views as evil and unholy, blaming the animal for all his woes, it is his addiction to drinking, more than anything else, that seems to be the true reason for the narrator's mental decline.
• House and home: " Home sweet home" is supposed to be a place of safety and security, however, in this story, it becomes a dark and tragic place of madness and murder. The narrator kills his favorite pet, tries to kill its replacement, and goes on to kill his own wife. Even the relationships that should have been the central focus of his healthy and happy home fall victim to his deteriorating mental state. 
• Prison: When the story opens, the narrator is physically in prison, however, his mind was already imprisoned by the shackles of madness, paranoia, and alcohol-induced delusions long before he was apprehended for his crimes. 
• The wife: The wife could have been a grounding force in the narrator's life. He describes her as having "that humanity of feeling." Rather than saving him, or at least escaping with her own life, she becomes a horrible example of innocence betrayed. Loyal, faithful, and kind, she never leaves her husband no matter how low he sinks into the depths of depravity. Instead, it is he who is in a sense unfaithful to his marriage vows. His mistress, however, is not another woman, but rather his obsession with drinking and the inner demons his drinking unleashes as symbolically personified by the black cat. He forsakes the woman he loves—and eventually kills her because he can't break the hold of his destructive obsession.

Major Themes

Love and hate are two key themes in the story. The narrator at first loves his pets and his wife, but as madness takes hold of him, he comes to loathe or dismiss everything that should be of the utmost importance to him. Other major themes include:

• Justice and truth:  The narrator tries to hide the truth by walling up his wife's body but the voice of the black cat helps bring him to justice.
• Superstition:  The black cat is an omen of bad luck, a theme that runs throughout literature. 
• Murder and death:  Death is the central focus of the entire story. The question is what causes the narrator to become a killer.
• Illusion versus reality:  Does the alcohol release the narrator's inner demons, or is it merely an excuse for his horrendous acts of violence? Is the black cat merely a cat, or something embued with a greater power to bring about justice or exact revenge?
• Loyalty perverted: A pet is often seen as a loyal and faithful partner in life but the escalating hallucinations the narrator experiences propel him into murderous rages, first with Pluto and then with the cat the replaces him. The pets he once held in highest affection become the thing he most loathes. As the man's sanity unravels, his wife, whom he also purports to love, becomes someone who merely inhabits his home rather than shares his life. She ceases to be a real person, and when she does, she is expendable. When she dies, rather than feel the horror of killing someone he cares for, the man's first response is to hide the evidence of his crime.

Poe's use of language enhance the story's chilling impact. His stark prose is the reason this and other of his tales have endured. Key quotes from Poe's work echo its themes.

On reality vs. illusion:

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief." 

On loyalty:

"There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man." 

On superstition:

"In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise." 

On alcoholism:

"...my disease grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol!—and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish—even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper." 

On transformation and descent into insanity:

"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 fiber of my frame." 

"This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the wrong's sake only—that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute." 

"Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and most evil of thoughts." 

Questions for Study and Discussion

Once students have read "The Black Cat," teachers can use the following questions to spark discussion or as the basis for an exam or written assignment:

• Why do you think Poe chose "The Black Cat" as the title for this story?
• What are the major conflicts? What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) do you see in this story?
• What does Poe do to reveal character in the story?
• What are some themes in the story?
• How does Poe employ symbolism?
• Is the narrator consistent in his actions? Is he a fully developed character?
• Do you find the narrator likable? Would you want to meet him?
• Do you find the narrator reliable? Do you trust what he says to be true?
• How would you describe the narrator's relationship with animals? How does it differ from his relationships with people?
• Does the story end the way you expected it to?
• What is the central purpose of the story? Why is this purpose important or meaningful?
• Why is the story usually considered a work of horror literature?
• Would you consider this appropriate reading for Halloween?
• How essential is setting to the story? Could the story have taken place anywhere else?
• What are some of the controversial elements of the story? Were they necessary?
• What is the role of women in the text?
• Would you recommend this story to a friend?
• If Poe had not ended the story as he did, what do you think might have happened next?
• How have views on alcoholism, superstition, and insanity changed since this story was written?
• How might a modern writer approach a similar story?
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• 'The Devil and Tom Walker' Study Guide
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One Man’s Internal and External Horrors: “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Black Cat,” is a tale of violence and an internal battle with alcoholism. The narrator starts off loving animals and his wife, but unfortunately turns to alcohol and starts abusing his wife and animals, sparing only a black cat: Pluto. One night in a fit of rage, he gauges out Pluto’s eyeball. Horrified with his action, he hangs Pluto to prove that he is really a terrible person. That night, his house burns down and Pluto’s image haunts him. He finds another cat who he treats well until Pluto starts haunting him through this cat. While his wife is defending the cat, he murders her and buries her in a wall. To his surprise, the cat was also buried with her. Throughout the story, the narrator is aware of his horrific actions, but he continues to commit the atrocities. The cycle of abuse is the narrator’s fault, however, his justifications and blame placing allow him to keep going, yet in the end, he is unable to escape his own guilt.

The narrator shifts from a loving human to an abusive monster. From loving animals to abusing all but one, to killing that animal, to finally murdering his wife, he is losing all sanity and decency. Despite the deterioration of the narrator’s stability and humanness, he has a moment of clarity and self-awareness:

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates – the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden frequent, and ungovernable outburst of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. (Poe 5)

This passage gives insight to the readers on how the narrator feels about himself and his actions. He is ashamed and regretful, yet states that he is powerless to himself. He feels he cannot do anything to stop himself and blames his actions on an outside source.

The narrator understands how appalling his tendencies are, yet he does nothing to stop, showing the dangerous cycles of alcoholism and abuse. He uses the word “evil” twice in the passage. Evil is a strong word only used to describe truly bad things; it is not used lightly. He understands the severity of his abuse, and recognizes it as “hatred” and “fury.” He also acknowledges his wife as “the most usual and the most patient of sufferers” (Poe 5). His wife later becomes the victim to his worst crime, homicide, and he knew that he was capable of doing that to her earlier. He knows he is an abuser, yet no effort is put in to stop. He wakes up in the morning, sees what he did to his animals drunk the night before, and proceeds to drink to forget about what he did; unfortunately, this leads to more alcoholic fits of rage. He allows his drinking to get the best of him, which hurts others, every time. While alcoholism and addiction are far more complicated than simply just choosing to stop, he makes absolutely no effort.

The narrator also justifies his abuse to himself and the readers by his language. First, the statement “pressure of torments,” (Poe 5) immediately suggests a placing of blame. Pressure, while it can come from oneself, typically refers to an outside force being placed on something else. Torment, again, suggests that something has come over him to make him behave this way, and it is not something he has control over. While alcoholism is a disease, there is no effort to fix the problem, making it the narrator’s fault, yet he is unable to recognize or admit this. Next, instead of mentioning that he lost touch with the good in him, he says, “the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed” (Poe 5). His language almost blames the good for leaving him, not himself for allowing the good to leave. Maybe he is attempting to get the readers on his side, however, it does not seem to be working. Lastly, he uses the word “ungovernable” when describing his rages. By saying this, he claims that he has no control over his body and his actions, but at the same time admits that he is not attempting to gain this control. Overall, the narrator is at a back and forth with himself mentally, he knows his evils, but blames them on outside forces instead of working to stop them.

Guilt, in the end, is able to find its way to get to the narrator and actually punish him for once. He accidentally reveals to law enforcement that he murdered his wife and buried her in the wall. In a way, it seems like he almost wanted to get caught, he continued to assure the police officers that everything is okay, and then hits the part in the wall wife his wife in it, which reveals her dead body. Maybe the only way he knew how to pay for his actions was to get caught. Maybe he did it subconsciously, but nonetheless, the justification and placing of blame was not enough to save him from the consequences of this murder. And to add to his guilt, the new cat (who white spot looked like Pluto which haunted him) was sitting in the wall with his dead wife. In a way, the only thing that survived his abuse, was the cat. His manifestation of his guilt lives in the second cat that continues to haunt him until his own demise.

The narrator’s inflection and explanation of his actions were in effort to deflect blame. However, the readers are able to see through this attempt and understand that it is truly his fault. He only sees this in the end, when his abuse is staring right back at him, in the form of the cat on the wife’s head. Alcoholism is a real issue, and Edgar Allan Poe used “The Black Cat” to show that. Currently, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 10% of children have alcoholic parents (NIH, 2020). This is a huge and sad problem. While this information is new, alcoholism is not. Poe wanted to illustrate how an alcoholic spouse can be extremely dangerous. Poe brings light to the inside of an alcoholic’s brain, all while showing the physical and psychological terror the narrator creates.

Works Cited

“DRIPPING BLOOD.” YouTube , 17 July 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vaRzfDvmg. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.

“man looking and staring himself in mirror.” YouTube , uploaded by Free Stock Video Categories Stock Footage, 7 Aug. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=j26sA6hFjX4. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.

“Multifandom | drinking to forget.” YouTube , uploaded by Heavenly Hunter, 10 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-3B5IYtDXI. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.

Nation Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “Alcohol Facts and Statistics.” Nation Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , 2020, www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “‘The Black Cat’ Edgar Allan Poe classic horror audio book ― Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.” Chilling Tales for Dark Nights , Youtube, 25 Oct. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYFZTEDVDRY. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

“Riddle of the Black Cat–Animated Edgar Allan Poe Short.” Youtube , uploaded by J. W. Rinzler and Greg Night, 12 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzPjlukF54o&t=423s. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

“Sitting Alone at Sea Side – royalty free stock video footage.” YouTube , 15 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=glxN4MScQk4. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.

Image: Google Images for Free and Fair Use

Music: Copyright free music provided by iMovie

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe Essay (Book Review)

Brief summary, literary analysis.

Edgar Allan Poe is among the few writers who supported and promoted Gothicism in the 1800s, in America. Having developed from transcendentalism, this form of writing aimed at exploring the fallibility of human nature. Poe allegedly immersed himself in writing dark and ominous pieces because of childhood trauma and the fact that he was an alcoholic. In other words, his motivation to pursue dark romanticism was based on personal experiences. One such dark story by Poe is “The Black Cat” , in which he employs terror and degeneracy to tell his narrative about the evil nature of human beings. This paper has two sections: the first one is a literary analysis of “The Black Cat” by Allan Poe highlighting the theme of terror, death, and violence, and stylistic devices, such as symbolism, metaphor, and irony. The second part discusses several criticisms leveled against this work by Poe.

“The Black Cat” starts with a monologue whereby the narrator reminisces about his childhood when he loved cats and dogs. He reflects on the gone days when he was an honorable man – more respected than his fellow men. He marries a beautiful woman who equally loves pets, and they have a black cat called Pluto. Life for the two lovebirds seems perfectly normal until the narrator becomes an alcoholic and forever changes his demeanor. He abuses his wife and mistreats Plato even at the slightest provocation. One night, he arrives home inebriated, and in his drunken stupor, he gouges out one of the cat’s eyes. The following day he remembers the previous night’s events remorsefully, and even though he regrets his actions, his soul is set on an irreversible ominous course. He later kills Pluto by hanging, but another black cat appears in his home. He attempts to kill the new cat, but his wife intervenes, and he axes and kills her instantly. He entombs the corpse in the basement of his house, and when the police unexpectedly show up at his house, he inadvertently leads them to the corpse.

This story was meant for the general population of that time. Dark romanticism was an emerging style in nineteenth-century America, and it focused on highlighting the evil nature of human beings. People tend to gravitate towards evil due to their fallibility and sinful nature, and Poe sought to share this information with the public at the time. This style of writing is important to American literature to warn people about the dangers of individualism, which has pervaded all aspects of society. When individuals pursue selfish ends as opposed to the common good, tragedy is bound to happen, as it did to Poe in the story.

The Theme of Terror, Death, and Violence

“The Black Cat” plotline revolves around terror, violence, and, ultimately, death. The narrator becomes a dipsomaniac, and he changes from a caring husband and a lover of animals to unleashing unprecedented terror. From his narration, it appears the narrator enjoys the violence that he engages in to those around him. He finally kills his wife using an axe, but he insinuates it is an accident. However, the audience might not be aware that Poe’s obsession with dark and gory stories was somehow connected to his personal experiences. Pruette (1920) posits,

The life of Edgar Allan Poe might be considered an unhappy record of that “disaster” which “followed fast and followed faster” this man of brilliant capacities till it drove him into opposition with most of the world, deprived him of the love he so inordinately craved, paralyzed his creative abilities, seduced him to seek a vague nepenthe in the use of drugs and stimulants, and, its relentless purpose achieved, cast him aside, a helpless wreck, to die from the darkened tragedy of a Baltimore. (p. 370)

Based on this assertion, it suffices to argue that Poe uses the rhetoric of confession to talk about his life experiences. Moldenhauer (1968) defines confessional rhetoric as a writing style in which the narrator “introduces or concludes his account with elaborate gestures of self-condemnation, and with dire forecasts of eternal disgrace for his name or perpetual torment for his soul” (p. 285). Poe’s narrative fits this definition because, in the story, he deliberately fails to make conclusions to let the audience know what happened after the police discovered the corpse of his wife. Presumably, he suffers eternally in perpetual torment for his actions. The suspense in the end of the story allows the audience to reflect and connect the events of the narrative with their lives.

In literature, symbolism refers to the use of images to convey an underlying message or embody a hidden meaning. In “The Black Cat,” this stylistic device plays a central role in the development of the overall plot and different themes. “The Black Cat” is used as a symbol in this story. Historically, black cats were associated with misfortune, bad luck, death, suffering, and a dark future, especially among people who believed in superstitions. In the story, the narrator adores the black cat, but it is about to change his life forever. It symbolizes the tragedy that is about to befall the narrator and his wife. Even though she is not superstitious, she “made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe, 1843, p. 4). To deepen the issue of misfortune, the black cat is named Pluto – who is a Hellenistic god of death.

Tragedy does not depart with the passing on of Pluto, as another black cat, with a white spot on its head, appears in the narrator’s house, and it terrifies him. He admits that the white spot is “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, 1843, p. 10). This new cat symbolizes the fate of the narrator – he will have to face the gallows and pay for the crime of killing his wife. He loathes and fears this feeling, but it is inevitable because, as a human being, he has gravitated toward sin.

Metaphor and Personification

As a literary device, metaphor is used to refer to something indirectly, while personification involves giving abstract ideas human characteristics. The narrator personifies the black cat with a white spot – a representation of his alcoholism and fallible nature, which has caused him untold suffering. After the police tear his house and discover the corpse of his wife, the black cat is seated on her head. The narrator then says, “…with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb” (Poe, 1843, p. 14). In this case, the narrator refers to his dark soul, which has been poisoned by alcohol and made him a disillusioned murderer blaming his woes on the black cat.

The house, in this case, is used metaphorically when the narrator says that he had embedded the monster inside the sepulcher. By hiding his wife’s corpse and the ensuing disappearance of the second black cat, he thinks that his problems are over. No one could ever find the corpse, and the cat would not return. However, the police discover the corpse, and the cat is found, and, thus, when he says that he had walled the cat up on the wall, he means that his evil ways are deeply embedded in his soul, and he cannot be saved. The wall is a metaphor for his body, and the cat symbolizes his dark soul, and given that he cannot be redeemed, he rues that he has been consigned to the hangman – death is the only redeemer of his soul.

The stylistic device of irony is used mainly in literature to express scorn, specifically by saying one thing, but deliberately implying something else. In “The Black Cat,” the audience is exposed to irony early in the story when the narrator says that he intends to talk about “a series of mere household events” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). The irony in this observation is that what follows has nothing to do with “mere household events” but the grotesque killing of Pluto and the narrator’s wife. The story is riddled with terror and violence, and, thus, it is ironic that the narrator talks of these events as normal household occurrences. Additionally, he starts the story by recounting how he loves animals and people – he remembers a time when he was more honorable than fellow men.

Ironically, the self-proclaimed lover of animals and people descends into dipsomania, and when he comes out, he turns against the very things that he loves. He first gouges out one of Plato’s eyes using a penknife and later kills the cat by hanging, and in the way he narrates the events, it appears that he is enjoying every bit of it. He also kills his wife, and instead of becoming remorseful and accountable, he tries to hide his crime by entombing the corpse in the basement. Another example of irony stands out when the narrator brags that he has safely hidden his crime, and it cannot be discovered. He says, “Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever…I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness” (Poe, 1843, p. 13). The narrator takes pride in his actions, but ironically, the very wall that he claims to be well-constructed, betrays him and exposes his evil.

“The Black Cat” has attracted numerous criticisms, especially where the narrator says, “My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). According to Bliss (2009), Poe situates the story within his home, which is a feminized environment, and by insinuating that abusing and ultimately killing his wife are mere household events, he validates gender violence. In addition, in the story, the narrator and his wife do not have children, and there is no mention of whether he is in gainful employment or engaged in any activities to support his family. Critics point to the portrayal of these events as a way of contravening cultural expectations of gender roles. In other words, Poe implies that men do not necessarily have to be providers of their families. Additionally, in order to compensate for his broken masculinity, the narrator resorts to violence directed towards his wife and the cat – both of whom are defenseless, which explains why he finally kills them both. Bliss (2009) argues that the narrator uses “perverseness to reinforce his masculinity, noting that acting on such an impulse gives direction to the character of man” (p. 97). Therefore, Poe seems to support social ills like perverse masculinity unleashing violence on females, which is being presented as normal household occurrences.

Another critic, Amper (1992), argues that the narrator in the story is a liar, as mentioned early in the story. The narrator allegedly tells a far-fetched tale to justify the killing of his wife by blaming it on alcoholism and the two black cats. He somehow claims that the axing of his innocent wife happened by accident, but he shows no remorse for his actions. He blames everything else but himself – for instance, after killing Plato, he alleges that another cat from nowhere appears and domesticates itself in his home, which eventually drives him into frenzy and he accidentally kills his wife while his intention is to strike the cat. Amper (1992) says, “Obviously, the man is lying” (p. 475). The narrator says that he is sane, but the fact that he does not anticipate anyone to trust his story is a validation that he is a liar.

In another critical analysis of the story, Tsokanos and Ibáñez (2018) claim that the black cat, Pluto “may not simply function as a demonic spirit, but rather as the Pluto of Hellenic mythology himself” (p. 111). Pluto was the Greek god of the underworld, where good and evil are in constant collision. Therefore, the black cat in this story does not symbolize evil; on the contrary, it is the Hellenic Pluto. As such, the entire story gets a new meaning as the focus shifts from the narrator to this Greek god. Tsokanos and Ibáñez (2018) argue that Poe had been exposed to Greek ideologies through the works of Homer and other classic writings as a teenager, and thus “The Black Cat” has nothing to do with his childhood experiences.

“The Black Cat” is a masterpiece story based on dark romanticism, which seeks to expose human beings’ fallibility and the tendency to gravitate towards evil. The narrator starts out as an admirable and respected person, but he sinks into alcoholism, which leads to the killing of Plato and his wife. Poe explores the themes of violence, terror, and death by using stylistic devices such as irony, symbolism, metaphor, and personification. Critical analyses of this story have yielded varied opinions. While Bliss (2009) points at the domestic masculinity in the story, Amper (2010) notes that the narrator is an outright liar, and Tsokanos and Ibáñez (2018) claim that “The Black Cat” is a representation of the Hellenic god, Pluto.

• Amper, S. (1992). Untold story: The lying narrator in “The Black Cat”. Studies in Short Fiction , 29 (4), 475-485.
• Bliss, A. V. (2009). Household horror: Domestic masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat . The Explicator, 67 (2), 96-99.
• Moldenhauer, J. (1968). Murder as a fine art: Basic connections between Poe’s aesthetics, psychology, and moral vision. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 83 (2) 284-297.
• Poe, E. A. (1843). The Black Ca t [PDF document]. Web.
• Pruette, L. (1920). A psycho-analytical study of Edgar Allan Poe. The American Journal of Psychology, 31 (4), 370-402.
• Tsokanos, D., & Ibáñez, J. R. (2018). Such as might have arisen only out of hell: A note on Poe’s Hellenic motifs in “The Black Cat”. Complutense Journal of English Studies, 26 , 111-120.
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Literary Analysis Of The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

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