The Black Cat

The narrator, by the end of the story, has revealed himself to be a vicious and violent abuser of animals and people alike. He has confessed to being irritable, difficult, tempermental, and is...

The opening paragraphs of the "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe reveal valuable information about the narrator, his animals, and his relationship with his animals just by the language the narrator...

As is the case with Edgar Allan poe stories, "The Black Cat" is narrated in first person point of view, and his name is never revealed. The reader does know that he is a man and that he...

At the beginning of the story, the narrator blames his nasty temper on the effects of alcohol. He admits to his bouts of rage and violence to the point that he seems to be a stranger to his former...

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe basically deals with brutal murder and domestic violence. The narrator, as in other Poe stories, attempts to convince the reader that he is not insane. Another...

The night the narrator hung Pluto, his house and everything he owned went up in flames. He, his wife, and a servant barely made it out of the house with their lives, but everything else was...

The two narrators in the stories “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are perverted. Edgar Allan Poe delved into the perversity of each of his protagonists to find what compelled them to...

There can be many interpretations as to why the narrator focuses on the eye of the cat in Poe's "The Black Cat". Here are a few of my own interpretations. First, Poe, himself, seems to have a...

I would suggest you start with three steps that relate to one another. First, review what a thesis statement is. You need to have a clear statement that can support an interpretation throughout...

One might think that having his wife safely concealed from detecting eyes might give him the most peace of mind. While he does think he "cleaned up" quite well, and is resting easy about the...

The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" gradually changes from a man of sane, congenial nature to a psychopathic man. In the beginning of the story, the narrator seems quite genial in...

The narrator's hatred for his black cat comes about over a period of time. At first, the cat was the narrator's "favorite pet and playmate" for several years, but that began to change one night...

The inciting incident in a story is the event that takes place that causes the protagonist to take action or "get things going." Without the inciting incident, the story would not take place;...

The line to which you refer is found in the fourth paragraph of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat." The narrator has explained his love of animals, and in this paragraph he describes his favorite...

I have had to edit your question because your original question contained multiple questions, which is not permitted under eNotes regulations. This story of course contains the narrator's attempt...

The Merriam-Websterdictionary defines "sagacious" this way: of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment. The dictionary definition also uses the word "discerning" at some point. Basically, a...

There is no dialogue in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat.” Dialogue consists of verbal interaction between two or more people. The narrator of Poe’s story sits alone in a prison cell,...

It is strange that he begins maltreating any of the animals at all, because in the beginning of the story he goest to great lengths to explain that he was "especially fond of animals...With...

Toward the end of the story "The Black Cat" the narrator does more than just tap on the brick. He describes his actions as "rapping heavily" upon the brick wall with a cane. At this point, the...

A thesis statement is a claim one can prove or disprove using evidence from the text. An argumentative essay cannot simply be a summary of a plot but must make a specific claim. "The Black Cat" by...

The narrator changes from a quiet, compassionate child to a madman, prone to uncontrollable fits of rage and--in his own words--perversion in adulthood. He tells us that even from infancy, he was...

Initially, all seems well between the narrator and his wife. They appear perfectly compatible with one another, sharing the same general dispositions. (But then appearances can be deceptive.) The...

"The Black Cat," like other well-known stories by Poe, fits the category of gothic literature chiefly because there are elements of the supernatural in it. These do not become apparent until after...

Poe creates the effect of time passing quickly by (C.) By using short sentences that speed up the pace of the story. A great deal happens in this paragraph, but much of what happens is covered in...

Of the two stories, "The Black Cat" is definitely more Gothic, but "The Lottery" also uses elements of the Gothic genre. Both stories point to the perverse nature of humanity, but Poe's story does...

Without question, my favorite story by Poe. Like so many of his stories, Poe seems to be toying with his audience. Sort of mentally "winking" at us as he pens his words. For Poe (and in The Black...

The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" is a murderer who claims that he was once so kind-hearted and docile that he was made fun of by his peers. He especially loved animals, however,...

Depravity is defined as an action or series of actions that are morally corrupt or even wicked. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” the narrator, who is never named, describes several actions...

Interesting question! Poe enhances the perverse nature of this story by presenting the narrator as both. By his sordid actions, the narrator is evidently the antagonist; but he solicits the...

In "The Black Cat," a short story by famed horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator realizes that his mental health is quickly deteriorating. Though he bears witness to his own descent into...

When drawing a comparison between H. P. Lovecraft's "The Cats of Ulthar" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat," I would specifically refer you to the first paragraph of Lovecraft's short story,...

"The Black Cat," which was written by Edgar Allan Poe, is an extremely well written story and could be considered one of the first stories of the horror genre (as could his others). Poe did a...

Well, we never know for sure if the narrator hallucinates anything at all, and part of the joy (or terror) of this story is the menacing possibility that actually everything the narrator...

"The Imp of the Perverse" is evidently intended as a scientific explanation by Poe of the innate human tendency to do the wrong thing—to perform some action simply because we know it is improper,...

In "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe gives us another one of his short stories about murder. The story is told from the first person perspective. In the first paragraph of the story the...

Broadly defined, justice means that any given action should meet with a fitting and appropriate consequence. In this short story, the protagonist, intoxicated and with “the fury of a demon,”...

The black cat could symbolize the narrator’s inner demons if you examine how his feelings change over time about the cat. At first, he loves and nurtures the cat, considering it his favorite pet....

In his 1843 short story The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator describes himself as an animal lover, with a particular affinity for certain of his and his spouse’s many pets. Among those he...

The murderer and narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Black Cat is considerably more concerned about his murder of his once-beloved cat Pluto than he is about the death of his wife. The...

Your question appears to indicate an uncertainty about the term "symbolism," especially as it is applied to this excellent short story by Edgar Allen Poe. When we talk about symbolism in...

If we look carefully at the story, we can see that the inner struggle that the narrator faces is thanks to his increasing addiction to alcohol and the way that it tempts him to engage in acts of...

As the narrator is so thoroughly unreliable, we can't know for sure what his precise motivations are. But as his confession is taking place on the eve of execution, perhaps one could argue that...

Poe's opening paragraph of this first person narrative raises the reader's curiosity and leads to the expectation of a bizarre story. The narrator invites the reader to construct his or her own...

Although Pluto had previously escaped the narrator's drunken fury, one night he was not so lucky. He had taken to avoiding the narrator because of his drunkenness, which the narrator was conscious...

"The Black Cat" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. "Meter" is a term used to describe the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. Since "The Black Cat" isn't poetry, it has no...

While Poe preceded Sigmund Freud, he,too, understood the urges of the id, describing them as "the spirit of perverseness." The narrator exercises this "spirit" by cutting out an eye from Pluto, the...

The Romantics possessed a conviction that intuition, and contemplation of the natural world is a way of discovering the truth that lies behand mere reality. Dark romantics like Poe also felt that...

Edgar Allan Poe's story “The Black Cat” is a truly morbid tale. The narrator begins as an animal lover whose favorite pet is a large black cat named Pluto. As time passes, however, the narrator...

Because the genre of literary magical realism began, at the earliest, in the twentieth century, literary scholars would not place "The Black Cat," published by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843, in that...

Poe uses his typical unreliable narrator in "The Black Cat." Other Poe stories such as "The Cask of Amontillado" and "Tell-Tale Heart" use the same technique in which a mentally unstable person...