The Black Cat | Critical Discussion
This terrifying tale embodies Poe's ideas about the pathological workings of the criminal mind. Poe believed that criminals are disposed to give themselves away not because of guilt but from the anticipated pleasure of defying moral authority. The narrator seems to relish the notion that his crime of hanging Pluto is a sin "beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God." His otherwise inexplicable act of preventing the police from departing and rapping on the bricks that conceal his wife's body is driven by the narrator's desire to "cap" his...
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