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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
1. Characters:
The narrator:
This character, whose identity we don’t know, describes himself as a sane man who used
to love and pamper animals and once was in love with his wife. As the story develops it
becomes clear that he has a growing problem with alcohol that leads to a violent behavior.
Policemen:
These characters are believed to be around six, are the investigators of the events in the
narrator’s house.
Servant:
This character appears at the beginning of the story showing us that the narrator was
once wealthy before he got troubled by alcohol.
The black cat by Edgar Allan Poe
Poem analysis by Carolina Gómez
Code: 1030561935
As the story develops we see how this happy story starts changing because of a
problem the narrator has with alcohol, which makes him become violent towards
his wife and pets. He starts mistreating everyone but Pluto, but one night he gets
irritated by Pluto’s presence and cuts its eye. Afterwards, he decides to hang the cat
from a tree to kill him.
Many unfortunate events happen after Pluto’s murder; the first one is the fire that
consumes the narrator’s house leaving only one standing wall with an image
depicting the hanging cat.
Then the appearance of a cat that is as a reincarnation of the first one which will
worsen the man’s mental state to a point where he cannot control himself and
attempts to kill it with an axe that ends up in his wife’s head.
Even though he turns into a human killer, the narrator seems to be tranquil at this
point of the story, feeling pride for the fact that he could successfully hide the corpse
and he stopped being persecuted by the second cat.
Finally, when the police came to his house and discovered the corpse and the
missing cat the narrator is arrested and the beginning of the story is fully explained.
The black cat by Edgar Allan Poe
Poem analysis by Carolina Gómez
Code: 1030561935
Genre
Thriller, psychological study Imagery
The most dominant image in the
Setting and Context story of the image of the black cat
1843, (unnamed place, possible hung by a cord appearing on the
US), as the narrator is waiting for narrator's wall after his house has
his execution been burned down
Allusions
The black cats are alluded to be
witches in disguises.