Story Critique

The Black Cat, published by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted in The Saturday Evening Post
Originally published on August 19, 1843

“The Black Cat”, is a story by Edgar Allan Poe. This short story talks about a black cat that first
sees as his precious pet, the only thing he actually seems to love. But end up being a monster, hunting
him. In our opinion, the most suitable form of criticism for this text would be the Reader-Response
Criticism. This is because the nature of the text is so confusing and holds a lot of aspects of suspense.
It made me feel very confused as he first loved the cat and then hated it. What changed that? Why
did that happen? The narrator became an alcoholic and go for to everyone and everything that came in his
way. Eventually he hangs the cat, which is very strange and made me feel weird. Why did he do that?
What did the cat to the narrator that make him mad?
The narrator finds a cat that looks like Pluto after Pluto’s death that follows him around which, at
the time, seems somewhat cute and loveable, but the narrator gets outraged by this cat as well and want to
kill his wife instead. Why would he kill his wife? What made him his furious all of sudden? This ends
with “I had walled the monster up within tomb!” I found this last sentence strange and mysterious, as I
realized the cat was behind the wall where the body of the narrator’s wife is buried, and the cat is still
alive and by meowing it’s essentially telling the police where the body is.

The reader-response approach would be the most appropriate response for the
story as it explores reader’s interpretation of events and the themes that occur in
the story. Moreover, the insanity of the narrator adds to mysterious atmosphere of
the text which in turn may confuse the readers being them to question the
narrator.