Below are some selections from some student responses to my questions regarding "The Black Cat." Since we didn't have class on Thursday, this is essentiall our "class discussion." If possible, skim some of these so you'll have a sense of what others thought and wrote about the story.
from Ryan:
When I think of the word “black cat,” I think of superstitions and how some people consider black cats to be evil. The color black itself can be seen as evil or representative of death. I think a significant quote from the story is at the very end, where it says, “Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!”(259). This is important because it really shows how the black cat was such an evil presence in the narrator’s life. Also, it makes you look at the story from a psychoanalytic standpoint. I was wondering if maybe the narrator was using the black cat as symbolism for maybe his alcoholism or maybe something else.
from Devon:
In terms of quotes, the narrator seems to allude to the fact that the bite of the first cat sort of transfers its evil soul to him: “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me” (Howe 256). He also makes reference to spiritual/deistic belief, with the following: “…even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God” (256).
It is important to analyze this story using psychoanalytic analysis for sure, but there are other analyses which could be used to dissect its meaning. Reader response could be used, as religion and belief and even belief in the spirit world all can be interpreted differently; for instance, one reader might consider that the narrator was a spiritual man and that the cat resembled sin (not only in reader response, but historical analysis as well), or reader response might determine that the narrator was simply a lunatic, and the reading audience does not know what has caused his madness, only that he is crazy. Perhaps historical analysis would be the best to use to analyze this story, as one would have to learn about Poe, the time in which he lived and wrote, and what his own personal experiences and beliefs were.
From Nick:
In the sixth paragraph, the narrator reveals that he is an alcoholic, saying, “But my disease grew upon me – for what disease is like Alcohol” (256 Poe). With the knowledge that the narrator is an alcoholic, the reader must be critical of the events that he relays. It becomes entirely possible that he misinterpreted, misrepresented, and even falsified situations. An understanding of alcoholism and addictive personalities will allow the reader to know that addicts tend to become frequent, and good, liars.
from Jackson:
The narrator then begins to descend into drink, which begins to make him abusive. “My general temperament and character-through the instrumentality of the fiend intemperance-had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse.” This sugar-coating of the narrator does little to cover up the fact that the narrator had become an alcoholic, and an angry alcoholic. “I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.” seems to be the least of the things the narrator does, horrifically abusing his animals and eventually gouging out the eye of his cat….
From Mitchell:
To begin, we know that the narrator is a violent alcoholic, abusive to people and animals, and eventually a murderer. This sets him up as a very unreliable narrator and it causes me to question the following assertion he makes at the beginning of the story: “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions.” His assertion may be completely true, for rampant alcoholism often has a detrimental effect on the human psyche. However, I personally believe that the narrator may be trying to justify his personage with this last record he is writing on the eve of his execution, and who he was before the events of this story is no different from who he is during those events. Humans seldom change that drastically.
From Emma:
Later in the story once the narrator’s life and mental state seem to be completely deteriorating he mentions his “uncomplaining wife”. Even though he seems to be a completely different person, they live in poverty, and he has gone completely insane (killing his favorite pet previously) his wife somehow has stayed with him and to his report has not complained about all of this but once. The wife seems to have retained her good spirit and the love for animals they once shared because she tries to stop the narrator from killing their second cat even though she must have known it would put some risk to her own life. Even in her death, she falls “without a groan”. While this detail may seem minute during a first reading of the story, most details in such a short story have some importance and this proves that in her last moment the wife still did not complain or “groan” about her husband’s actions.
from AnnMarie
Within this short story, there are three particular moments of violence that are pivotal to the story line. The first one is when the narrator grabs Pluto by the neck, Pluto bites him in defense, which causes the narrator to “deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket”. What is most notable about this act of violence though is how the narrator relays to us the emotions he feels right before the act. He describes what he feels after Pluto bites him, as “the fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.”. The physical aggressor here is obviously the narrator, yet here he is, blaming a sudden burst of fury for blinding him and possessing his body to do unspeakable evil to this cat. This excuse seems to be the only motive for the violence. What is also interesting is that in the other two acts of violence I mentioned, the moment the narrator hanged the cat and the time when he murdered his wife with an ax, there also seems to be no plausible explanation for what suddenly threw the narrator into a violent fit of rage. When he hanged the cat he did so “in cool blood”. When he “buried the axe in her brain,” he does so because he was” goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal”. In every instance of violence, it seems that the narrator was out of sorts with himself and that some external force controlled his actions.
from Stephanie:
Throughout the story there are multiple instances of violence. These acts are described in detail and with a very cold disturbing tone. The first major act of violence comes with the narrator gouging out his cats eyeball. The narrator states: "I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!" (256). He describes a gruesome act of cutting an eyeball out as though it was nothing in detail step by step. Even though he calls the cat a "poor beast" there is no emotion behind it.