The Black Cat

â€Å"The Black Cat† by Edgar Allan Poe is one of Poe’s greatest literary works that embodies his signature themes of death, violence, and darkness. Poe’s main character begins his narration of his horrible wrongdoings regarding them as a â€Å"series of mere household events† (Poe 705). However, this is where Poe’s satire and irony begins and the story progresses to show the deranged mindset of this character as he tries to justify his actions. As the main character proceeds to rationalize his crime, Poe is able to convey a sense of irony through his use of foreshadowing, metaphors and symbolism. Irony begins within the narrator’s introduction to his confession by telling the reader that he will tell his story but â€Å"without comment† (Poe 705). Within this same ironic tone, the narrator continues to humanize his actions and plea for justification but predicts that what he has already done has destroyed him. Poe describes how â€Å"these events have terrified–have tortured–have destroyed† him (Poe 705). Poe adds an ironic tone to the story by telling it through the narrator’s perspective. The narrator is a demented individual and the average reader cannot relate to the evil that has erupted inside him. As he begins to rationalize, there is a vast difference between the narrator and the reader leading to the irony that the man feels that this was all a normal series of misfortune. Literary critic, Richard Badenhausen, explains Poe’s decision for telling the story from the narrator’s point-of-view, â€Å"Despite pledging to tell his tale â€Å"without comment,† the narrator is constantly qualifying, correcting, and explaining, in the hope that the audience will see events from his perspective. Although he ironically announces in the opening sentence that he â€Å"neither expect[s] nor solicit[s] belief† the narrator is obsessively concerned with both activities: he hopes for understanding from his listeners and energetically pursues approval by employing the various manipulative tools of the storyteller† (Badenhausen 487). Finally, Poe also thickens the suspense of the story with the early foreshadowing that the main character feels that he may harm his wife writing, â€Å"At length, I even offered her personal violence† (Poe 706 ). The greatest metaphor throughout this tale is the black cat. While the narrator’s wife has been known to refer to the dark-haired feline as a â€Å"witch in disguise†, the metaphor for Poe is that the cat is not only a superstitious monster but it is also a metaphor for being the narrator’s own personal demon (Poe 706). The recurring events with the black cats in the story portray that they are metaphors for the narrator’s own problems that haunt him. As the series of events continue throughout the story, the cat becomes a visual element in the scene for the narrator’s recurring violence and finally brings him to the point of his insanity. Moreover, it has been argued that the cat is a metaphor for the narrator’s wife. Critics claim that the following passage raises suspicion that the killing of the first cat was actually the murder of his own wife. Poe writes: Norton Anthology American Literature. 7th. 1. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 2008. 705-711. Print. Critics who support this notion feel that the â€Å"reversal is substitution in wife for cat and cat for wife† and that the narrator had clearly projected his feelings for his wife onto the cat (Amper 475). Literary critic, Susan Amper, commented on this metaphor-theory, â€Å"It is not merely that the wife was always the intended victim; she was the original, in fact the only victim. Moreover, this inference provides a much more compelling reason for the narrator's substitution of cat for wife or rather twin reasons, for his pretense that he has only killed his cat serves both to ease his own sense of guilt, and to shield him from prosecution for murder (Amper 475). This theory also supports the irony that the wife’s body was decomposed after merely three-days and leaves the reader with one of Poe’s signature suspenseful, disturbing endings. The final writing element that Poe uses throughout this short story is symbolism. Readers are introduced to one of the story’s main characters, Pluto, the black cat, who supposedly provokes the narrator into committing his heinous acts of violence but is merely symbolic for the narrator’s imbedded hatred and evil. Not only is this feline symbolic for evil because of superstitions regarding black cats, the cat’s name has a deeper symbolic meaning. According to Roman Mythology, Pluto is name of the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. This symbolic name not only represents the narrator’s cruel intentions but also provides a sense of foreshadowing. After the first black cat is slain, a second black cat appears and is unwelcomed by the narrator. According to Professor Ann Bliss from the University of California, â€Å"looks remarkably like the original except in one respect: it is marked with a patch of white that, for the narrator, increasingly comes to resemble a gallows—reminding the narrator of his violence toward the first cat and foreshadowing acts of violence to come† (Bliss 97). The white color of the patch with the offsetting black fur is also symbolic to the good and evil confliction within the narrator. Finally, the second black cat leads to the narrator allegedly murdering his wife accidently. In conclusion, Poe’s literary masterpiece, â€Å"The Black Cat† is a suspenseful story filled with irony and hidden messages and themes. Although this is a short-story, Poe skillfully provides the reader with enough evidence to make conclusions about the motive, sequence of events, and the narrator’s denial of apparent mental disorder and alcoholism that plagues him.