How does Edgar Allan Poe reveal character in "The Black Cat"?

Poe reveals character mostly via direct characterization of the narrator. The narrator describes himself as possessing "tenderness of heart" and a "fond[ness] for animals." He claims that he was happiest when he was "feeding and caressing" his many and varied pets, which were gifts from his parents while growing up. Further, he says that this love of animals grew with him into adulthood and that it is from this that he "derived . . . one of [his] principal sources of pleasure." Then, when he married, he was pleased to see that his wife shared this partiality for animals, and she immediately went to work in adopting several different animals to join their household. All of this detail is direct characterization: information about the character that is revealed directly and explicitly with no need for us to infer.

This direct characterization continues, even as the narrator experiences a change in his personality. He says that he "experienced a radical alteration for the worse." He grew more irritable and indifferent toward others' feelings, and he was even cruel to his wife. He neglected his pets and even mistreated them. The narrator directly names his "fiendish malevolence" on the night when he cut out his cat's eye. He also names the "spirit of perverseness" that consumes his person. All of this is direct characterization.

Character is defined through two distinct types of characterizations: direct and indirect characterization. Direct characterization is evident through the author defining exactly how a character is. The author hides nothing--naming the character through direct (explicit) details. For example, a direct characterization (from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat") exists when the narrator openly states "From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition" Here, the speaker openly provides a characterization of himself for the reader (he is mild and humane).  

Indirect characterization, on the other hand, is where the author provides information regarding a characterization through defining actions, interactions, or dialogue from which a reader must draw conclusions. In this, a reader must infer who a character is based upon the situations defined by the narrator or author. For example, the author openly states that he is not "mad." As the reader progresses through the story, he or she may come to challenge this statement. A reader, under these circumstances, should question the narrator's mental stability. Is a character who goes to the extent this narrator goes to really sane? The answer to this question provides an example of indirect characterization. 

Describe the characters in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat".

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Black Cat," the main character, other than the two cats prominently featured in Poe’s story, is the unnamed narrator.  The story is told in retrospective style by the narrator, apparently a man of means given his reference in the story to a servant who lives with him and his wife, and who the reader is led to believe is imprisoned and soon to be executed for a crime to be described.  Similar to Poe’s narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" who strenuously denies any suggestion that he is “mad” before proceeding to refute his own point, the narrator in "The Black Cat" begins his story with a rejection of the notion that he is anything but sane, stating “. . .mad am I not . . ., before informing us that his conscience is troubled: “tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul.”  Having informed the reader of his need to unburden his soul regarding the chain of events that led to his current status, he then proceeds to describe his character as follows:

“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. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.”

The narrator, who is yet to mention his wife and current pet, the black cat, is setting the stage for the subsequent description of his descent into hell – a series of developments in which the aforementioned spouse and cat both play prominent roles, and during which the narrator is rendered financially destitute as a result of his alcoholism and a fire that destroys his home.  By emphasizing his docile nature in the beginning, however, he is establishing the context in which he performed a crime so vile that his punishment is execution.  His avowed affection for animals is particularly relevant for his description of the events that will follow and that involves not just one but two black cats.  The precipitating development that sets the fatal chain of events in motion is the narrator’s growing problem with alcohol, the “Fiend Intemperance,” as the puts it.  The effects of his alcoholism includes physical and emotional abuse of his wife, as well as a growing disdain for the animals he previously nurtured, including the titular black cat, Pluto, “a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.”  Pluto, obviously, play a major role in the narrator’s descent into madness.  Cats, of course, are intuitive and sensitive to the dispositions of those with whom they live.  Pluto is no exception, and his owner’s increasing hostility to all around him is felt by the cat.  After having one of his eye’s cut out with a knife by his inebriated master, Pluto is later hanged with a noose by the narrator. 

The next character mentioned is the narrator’s unnamed wife, who he affectionately describes as follows: “I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.”  While he clearly once enjoyed his wife’s company, however, the first hint of troubles to come – besides the story’s opening reference to the narrator’s impending execution – occurs when he notes his wife somewhat primitive intellect with respect to matters of the occult: “my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.”  Further information on the narrator’s wife is provided later in the story, after he has killed Pluto, who has been replaced in the home by another black cat, a description of which will be provided next.  Describing his and his wife’s relationships to this new cat, with his own decidedly mixed, he states regarding his spouse, “. . .my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.”  So, we know that the narrator’s wife is of a sweet disposition and has been subjected to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband, the degradations of which have not destroyed the humanity inside her. 

The next character is the second black cat, described by the narrator as follows:

“It was a black cat—a very large one—fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast.”

That “splotch of white” will become increasingly important to the narrator’s rapidly diminishing sanity.  Despite the cat’s displays of a friendly and loyal disposition towards the narrator, the latter quickly develops a deeply-felt sense of loathing towards the animal, noting that some of this hatred for the animal stemmed from the fact that, like Pluto after the narrator had cut out one of its eyes, the new cat was similarly missing an eye.  It is that white fur on its breast, however, that haunts the narrator the most, as, over time, the “splotch” begins to take on a noticeable pattern, best described by Poe’s as follows:

“It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name—and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared—it was now, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!—oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime—of Agony and of Death!”

The final characters in "The Black Cat" are the policemen who come to the narrator’s home and before whom the narrator, having killed his wife and concealed her remains behind a brick wall in his cellar, are presented the audible cries of the cat who the narrator had mistakenly sealed in his wife’s vault.  There are, we can deduce, six police officers, as, in the story’s final paragraph, a reference to  “a dozen stout arms” that “were toiling at the wall” following the narrator’s ill-considered decision to demonstrate the stoutness of the house’s walls by rapping on the newly-constructed section of wall with his cane, the sound of which provoked the entombed cat’s cries.

How does Edgar Allan Poe portray the supernatural element in "The Black Cat"?

"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe has elements of the supernatural common in many of Poe's short stories and poetry.

The black cat that lives with the main character appears supernatural. The idea is introduced with his wife's concern about the cat's color and witchcraft.

...my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.

The cat's name is "Pluto," which could refer to the Greek's mythology and religion as the god of the underworld...

the god was also known as Hades, a name for the underworld itself

"Plutos" is at times used in Latin literature as the ruler of the dead. We can surmise that Poe intentionally used this name to symbolize death and promote the motif of death in the story. The reader sees the growing intensity of the speaker's madness and drunkenness with his violent attack of Pluto, cutting out his eye. Time passes and the speaker's madness intensifies until he takes the cat out and hangs it from a tree next to his house. That same night, the house catches fire. The link here between "disaster and atrocity" seems supernatural as well.

The "other-wordly" does not stop. The next day there is a "three-dimensional image" on one of the house's walls. It is the figure of a giant cat with a rope around its neck. The speaker is at first petrified by what he sees, but soon rationalizes the image and forgets about it. The narrator calls himself "perverse," and he shows this trait when he decides to get another black cat. There are two strange things about this cat: it has sight out of only one eye (like Pluto), and a white patch on its chest that grows in size after the speaker takes it home—into the shape of a gallows.

The narrator's insanity intensifies and he begins to hate the cat. The more he avoids it, the more attached the cat becomes. This could be an eerie sort of supernatural punishment for killing Pluto. One day while walking into the cellar with his wife (with an axe in his hand), the speaker takes a swing, trying to kill the cat. His wife stops him; he pulls the axe back again and instead, kills his wife, but the cat disappears.

It is imperative for the speaker to hide his wife's body and he wants to avoid taking it outside, so he puts the corpse in an enclosure behind a reconstructed wall.

I determined to wall it up in the cellar—as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.

Four days later, the police arrive and want to search the house. The speaker must accompany them. He is calm and unworried, but then as the police prepare to leave, he tells them to look at the wall.

"...these walls are solidly put together”; and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with [my] cane...upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of [my] wife.

As he taps on it, a "hair-raising" sound is heard:

I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!—by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl—a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell...

He had walled the cat up with the body. A superstitious perception might be that Pluto has returned in the form of the second cat, and—in triumph—has his revenge on the man who killed him.

Describe the new cat in "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe.

“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 focus of the story explores the nature of evil.

The narrator or main character shocks the reader with several hideous acts.  He drinks too much although many men drink and do hurt animals that they profess to love. Actually, the man should be described as a violent bully, who makes his pets' and wife’s life hellish.

In his favor, he never complains about his selfless wife. However, this nameless killer finds himself in prison the night before his execution, wanting to tell his tale of perversion and murder. Blaming the black cats creates an excuse for the narrator because he refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

The first cat

Pluto was a beautiful, entirely black cat.  He appeared to be loving and even intelligent as cats go. The narrator tells the reader that he loved the cat.  Because of his drinking or possible insanity, he centers his distorted outlook on Pluto.  [Pluto is the name of the Roman God of the underworld.]

Pluto goes from a beloved pet to having his eye cut out and eventually killed by hanging from a tree.  The most peculiar event occurs when the narrator sees the image of the hanging cat burned into the wall of his burned house like a bas-relief.  Mysterious to say the least, the portrait is probably a result of the man’s guilt.

The second cat

Missing an eye, completely black except for a white spot, the second cat could have been a twin of Pluto. The cat seemed to magically appear in a bar. The second cat enjoyed the attention and being petted.  Subsequently, the man decides to take him home to his wife, who immediately loves him. The speaker provides many explanations for the similarities between Pluto and this cat.

Soon the man begins to detest the cat just as he had Pluto.  Luckily for the cat, he resists abusing him.   As the story progresses, the white spot expands to look like the gallows from which the man will eventually hang for the death of his wife.  The cat follows the speaker everywhere. The cat even sits on his chest as he sleeps.   One day, the man and the woman go down to the basement, and the cat follows them.  Crazed by his hatred of the cat, the man picks up the axe intending to kill the cat.  The wife prevents him, and in his insanity, he buries the axe in his wife’s brain.  After walling up his wife’s body, several days go by before the police show up to inquire about his wife.

In his hubris, the narrator hits the wall of the cellar to brag to himself that he has fooled everyone. Suddenly, though a sound is heard:

at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell

The wall is pulled down and the cat is discovered walled up with the woman. Almost insane from his captivity, the cat was sitting on the head of the woman.  He had been surviving by eating the flesh of the wife.