5 min read · Nov 8, 2019
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‘The Black Cat’ is a short story by the famous American poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known to be part of the American Romantic movement, and is famous for his writings that incorporate mystery and macabre. Elements of both Romanticism and Gothic movements are present in this short story, making ‘The Black Cat’ a prime example of Gothic Romantic literature. Poe’s use of tone, narration-style, and symbols keeps the reader engulfed in the story, leaving it open to multiple thought-provoking interpretations.
The tone in this short story interesting, and I would like to argue that the use of tone is the best literary device used in this story. At first read, I found this story very disturbing. I was horrified at the crooked working of the narrator’s mind, and yet I found myself also understanding his perspective. I thought the cats must have possessed the narrator, to a point that all the violence against the poor cats felt justified. The tone is set by the narrator, who can fall under the “unreliable narrator” trope, a trope that is also seen in Poe’s short story ‘Tell-Tale Heart’. In this story the reader explores the narrator’s moral downfall, as the 1st person narrator lays out to the reader the events that led him to murder his wife. Words such as ‘brute’, terrified’, ‘tortured’, etc. are dispersed all over the story, creating an altogether dark atmosphere. Since these words were present from the very beginning, the eventual change of the narrator’s moral character seemed natural and slow to me. This however, I found especially startling later, upon reading different interpretations of the story. It was stupefying to see myself to even empathize to extent with the narrator, even after the sinister turn of events. The trick that the writer used to create this effect, was: Romanticism. When the story begins, the narrator seems melancholic about a past when he “was noted for (his)… docility and humanity”. This style of writing, where a past is often idealized is a quality of Romantic literature. However, because of the dark tone in the story, we can say that The Black Cat’s genre falls under the subgenre of Gothic/ Dark Romanticism. Ira Mark Milne1 describes Dark Romanticism as “characters (are) struggling to keep up with their emotions (and) escape from the true reality of life” (Vol. 2: 705–743). In ‘The Black Cat’ Edgar Allan Poe does leave such a delicate effect. By crafting a story where each and every word brings effect to his story, Poe tricks readers like me to think that the narrator’s words are logical. David Lodge2 in his book “The Art of Fiction” also examines Edgar Allan Poe’s narration style and concludes that Poe is indeed cunning; he uses the narrator’s voice to complicate the response from us readers who are outside the text. We do not know if we want to trust the narrator, and even when we do; like I did, we soon become more skeptical through a second reading. It is because of all of this that I think the tone used is the best literary device in this story.
The second captivating thing about this literary piece is its underlying symbolism. The cats, and the violence inflicted on them, the unburnt “compartment … that rested above’” the narrator’s head, all have hidden meanings. First of all, I was especially fascinated when under inspection I found the fact that the cat was named after the Roman god of death: Pluto. This brings an ominous effect about the story, which is in other words, is as I mentioned, fascinating. The second mentionable symbolism lies in the carving out of Pluto’s eye. When the narrator does that, it is symbolic to his blinding himself; from that point forward the narrator’s ethical standpoint is broken forever. Lastly, Poe paints a picture of horror and mystery when the narrator’s entire home is burnt down to ashes, and only one compartment with a “gigantic figure” of a cat remains. This might have suggested the durability of the narrator’s remorse, or hatred for the cat. This short story would not have been the same without this use of symbols, and I greatly enjoyed spotting them while reading the story.
Just like any form of art, Poe’s work also welcomes different interpretations. As I mentioned before, my first interpretation was at face value. Even though I adore felines, and the descriptions of the violence on the cats did annoy me, they somehow still seemed justified at first read. However, when we keep in mind that the person narrating has committed murder, and is an alcoholic, we can establish the fact that the narrator is completely unreliable. And when I read the story from that perspective, I found it deeply upsetting, where the descriptions by Poe bring out only anger me. There are however, even bigger claims in terms of interpretation of this story. In her paper “Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat.”, Ann V. Bliss3 analyses The Black Cat through the lens of the narrator’s struggle with masculinity’. She argues that the narrator’s affection towards animals, and being gentle throughout his early days was feminine, and the eventual killing of the narrator’s wife was his most excessive masculine act. Another controversial claim can be made that in the short saying that the cat was actually a black man, and this story was about a love affair between a white man and men of color who met at a bar. This argument is put forward by A. George in his online essay4 is that the story was about hom*osexual love at a time when it was forbidden, and slavery was still in practice. Meaning the adopted cats were actually servants, who the narrator had extra marital affairs with.
All these responses to this famous short story are overwhelming and are very logical in their debate, thus making Poe successful as a writer by bringing so much discussion over his short story. While this short story is definitely disturbing, ominous in its tone and mysterious in its symbolism, it is these very attributes that make it one of the greatest Gothic Romantic pieces of literature. “The Black Cat” inspired many adaptations in film and also a few artists and illustrations; one of my favorite Art-Nouveau illustrators, Beardsley5, in fact drew a haunting illustration for this very short story. It is evident that Poe left a mark in literature since this short story is still relevant today, represented both in media, and in educational institutions, two centuries after it was first published.
Reference list:
1. Milne, I. M. (1999) Short stories for Students Vol 7, MI, Detroit: Gale Group
2. Lodge, D. (1994) The Art of Fiction, Penguin Books, Unknown edition
3. Bliss, A. V. (2010) Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat. Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/EXPL.67.2.96-99
4. George, A. (2019)The Real Meaning Behind Poe’s “The Black Cat” Retrieved from: https://medium.com/@andrewjoegeorge/the-real-meaning-behind-poes-the-black-cat-894eaa485e8f
5. Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley: http://www.openculture.com/2015/09/aubrey-beardsleys-macabre-illustrations-of-edgar-allan-poes-short-stories-1894.html
