Blog Entry 11 My Chosen Story

The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe


I chose a short story called “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. Its genre is horror and was written in 1843. I have read this story several times and I would like to use this story for my next essay because it illustrates a human’s evil mind that leads to a murder. Although this story was written long time ago, its theme seems to apply in many current societies. The story is presented by a narrator who, in the beginning had a good time with his wife and his loving pets including a large black cat named Pluto. Several years after his happy time, however, becomes an alcoholic. He starts torturing his cat and later gouges out the cat’s eye. The narrator regrets what he had done to his cat, but later he would be irritated with the cat again and finally hangs it on the tree. As time passed, he finds another cat which looked very similar to his old cat, even a missing eye was the same. He takes it home, but soon begins to hate it again. One day when narrator and his wife are visiting the cellar in their new house, the cat gets under his feet and makes him almost fall down the stairs. The man gets horrified and grabs an axe to kill it and his wife tries to stop him. In anger, he kills his wife instead with the axe. To hide the corpse of his wife, he replaces the body in the wall. When the police come to his house to investigate, they cannot find the dead body and the narrator feels relief. On the last day of investigation, the police officers hear the sound of cry from the wall where the narrator put his wife's corpse. They break the wall, find the body and the black cat on top.

In order to interpret “The Black Cat,” I will use psychoanalysis criticism begun by Sigmund Freud. This approach was used to explore the psyche of authors and characters, and to explain narrative mysteries (Wikipedia). I found this approach useful because another story by Edgar Allen Poe was interpreted by Freud also. Since the narrator of the story had problems of alcoholism and anxiety which led him to commit such a cruel crime, it would be helpful to use psychoanalysis criticism to study the psyche of the author and the narrator in the story.


Here is an entry for "The Black Cat"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cat_(short_story)

You can also read the entire story from this link,
http://www.online-literature.com/poe/24/

Information about Psychoanalysis Criticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_literary_criticism

Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_2.jpg