," this man wants the reader tounderstand his actions, which is an impossible task when dealing with madness: he does not deal with logic or reason.

Thinking himself "excitable," the narrator expects that perhaps someone else can shed some light on this story:

Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place...which will perceive... nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.

The narrator begins to present his defense; he says that from the time he was a child, he was "docile" and "tender of heart." He describes his love of animals as a child, but his character suffers when he says that he never outgrew this youthful, child-like attachment to animals.

This peculiar of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.

There is foreboding when he call a pet a "brute:" Companionship?—yes. Devotion?? The narrator marries and his wife loves animals, too, but she shares concern about Pluto's color and "witches," which he dismisses as a meaningless notion.

(Note, "Pluto," is the Greek god of the underworld, the Roman god of Hades; a place of the dead. The cat may symbolize death.)

Then, the speaker admits to a drastic change in his character. He drinks, becomes moody and abusive to his wife, and to his animals. Frightened one night by his owner, Pluto bites him, and the speaker snaps. He cuts out the cat's eye. The cat heals but now avoids him. The perverse anger he feels at the cat's fear is troubling. The image of the true man emerges as he chooses to kill the cat for no good reason. He hangs the cat from a tree—while believing he commits a great sin.

There seems a link between "disaster and atrocity:" his house burns down that night. He finds another cat very similar and brings it home, but soon comes to hate it, though it adores him. Its white chest looks like a gallows. The narrator' has nightmares of the cat on his face. His hatred grows, and so he tries to kill it, but kills his interfering wife instead.

Without remorse, the narrator hides the body in a basement wall. The cat disappears. Four days later the police call. The speaker is proud of his job in hiding the body, and following them, he draws attention to the new wall as they start to leave, hitting it with his cane. At once, a sound erupts from the hidden space: "a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph."

And so, his crime is exposed—he will die. This "tender hearted man" is a fiend, completely insane—exposed by his nemesis, the black cat—but which one...or the same one? Poe leaves us with delicious questions.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” may be the most disturbing of any of his other stories.  The victims include not a human being but an animal as well.  Poe uses an unusual approach of fantasy intertwined with reality so that the reader almost loses the boundaries between these two elements. 

Narration

The point of view is first person with the unnamed narrator the main character in the story.  The narrator spends much of time trying to convince the reader that he is not insane.  As the story progresses, it is obvious that the man was not only an alcoholic but an insane murderer. The man commits several heinous acts and knows that they are wrong particularly the brutal killing of the first cat.

Conflict

The main character faces a conflict with alcoholism.  He even admits that this problem has tainted his entire life.   He also seems to be challenged by deciding between reality and fantasy. 

The Exposition and Rising Action

The main character awaits his execution the next day. Through the telling of the story, he intends to convince the reader that he is completely sane.   His alcoholism impacts his life.  He turns on his beloved cat and cuts out its eye.  The man cannot live with guilt of what he has done.  One day, he hangs the cat from a tree in the yard.  That night the house burns and only one wall is left standing.

One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; -hung it with the teas streaming from eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; --hung because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin…

On that wall was been burned the impression of the cat hanging. 

Further Action

After several months of trying to return to normalcy, the man goes into a saloon and sees another black cat.  It has a missing eye and looks exactly like the other cat except it has a little white around its neck.  Initially, the narrator loves this cat.  But as before, he begins to be annoyed by this one as well.  He notices that the cat’s white around his neck mysteriously looks like a noose for hanging.

Climax

As the man and his wife were walking down the stairs  to the cellar, the wife almost falls over the cat. The man becomes furious and picks up an axe to kill the cat.  The wife defends the cat, and the man buries the axe in her brain rather than the cat.

Falling Action

The narrator decides to hide the body of his wife in the cellar by using plaster to cover over where she was placed.  After he buries her, the main character notices that the cat is missing.

After four days, the police come to find out about his missing wife. Thinking that he has hidden the body so well, the narrator takes the police down to the cellar to look for his wife. Arrogantly, he taps on the wall where the body’s lies hidden. A scream is heard from inside the wall. The police tear down the wall to find the dead woman with the missing cat on her head and covered in blood.

Commentary

The boundaries between fantasy and realism become difficult to separate. All of the events that happen in the story could have happened.  Some of them are less likely than others. For example, the cat staying quiet until the tapping on the wall seems unlikely since it undoubtedly would have wanted out. 

As the story moves toward the end, the narrator loses his grip on reality and is unsure himself as to what actually happens in the story.