The Black Cat

In "The Black Cat," symbols such as the titular black cat, the gallows, and the image of Pluto create a sense of fear and horror. The black cat symbolizes the narrator's guilt and descent into...

In "The Black Cat," Poe uses vivid and dark imagery to maintain tension, such as the description of the narrator's deteriorating mental state and the gruesome details of the cat's death and...

The beginning of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" introduces the narrator, who confesses his love for pets and his descent into alcoholism. The inciting event occurs when, in a drunken rage, he...

The point of view of "The Black Cat" is first-person objective. The narrator is a participant in the events, using the first-person pronoun "I" and recounting past events. Additionally, the narrator...

The author explains that the narrator tells the story to "unburthen [his] soul," expressing disbelief in his own tale despite having lived it. He writes it the night before his expected execution,...

The first-person point of view in Poe's "The Black Cat" creates a mood of suspense and horror by using an unreliable narrator. As the narrator recounts his crimes with contradictions—professing love...