What is the tone and mood of "The Black Cat"?

Tone is how the author feels about the subject of a text, while mood describes the emotional atmosphere created by the text—or, put more simply, how the reader is supposed to feel while reading the text. In allowing the narrator to tell his own story, Poe’s tone becomes harder to discern. With a third-person narrator, Poe could have infused a great deal of his own thoughts about the narrator and his actions into the text, and he does not take this opportunity. However, I think that it is possible to discern some judgment on Poe’s part, especially when the narrator seems to care more about telling his own story rather than feeling guilty or grief-stricken for the wife he so cruelly murdered. The murderer only cares to “unburden [his] soul” rather than atone or repent for his misdeeds.

The narrator describes how he was “noted for the docility and humanity” of his personality when he was younger, how he was even made fun of as a result of his “tenderness of heart.” Such details become a little harder to believe when one reads what the narrator has done both to his pets and to his wife. His repeated insistence that he is not mad—despite the fact that he murdered his wife in cold blood and then happily walled up her corpse in his cellar—is also chilling. Therefore, I would describe the mood of the text as ominous and dark. The narrator foreshadows his crime by telling us that he dies “to-morrow” in the first paragraph, and so we can assume that he is being executed for this crime. Our sense of tension ought to build as we await his confession of that crime.

To achieve tone, which is dependent upon diction and style, writers manipulate language in an attempt to demonstrate how they feel about the narrative. With such an unreliable narrator as Poe uses in "The Black Cat," the tone is variable. At times, it is unwittingly ironic and irreverent; at others, it is dark and mocking.

IRONIC AND IRREVERENT

• In the exposition, the narrator states that he proposes to retell "mere household events" that seem to him "little but horror" while to others they will "seem less terrible than baroque." 
• The narrator states that he grew more irritable with his wife and "at length I even offered her personal violence." [the use of "offered" is ironic and disrespectful to his wife]
• When he attempts killing the second cat, the narrator's wife intervenes and he ironically narrates, "Goaded by this interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain."
• In the next paragraph, the narrator's tone is irreverently calm as he describes how he set about with "deliberation" to conceal his dastardly deed.

DARK AND MOCKING

• After he murders his wife, the narrator reflects "The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little." He adds, "I looked upon my future felicity as finally secure.
• When the police arrive unexpectedly, the narrator asserts that he is "[S]ecure in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever."
• As the police depart, he tells them, "Gentlemen, I am delighted to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. Taunting them, he says, "By the way, gentlemen, this--this is a very well-constructed house...."

The mood of "The Black Cat" is one of foreboding and menace. The speaker immediately insists that he does not expect us to believe him, that he is not a madman, and that he is scheduled to die tomorrow—to be executed for his crimes. He wishes to "unburden [his] soul" to us, and so it must be something terrible he is about to confess. These statements, alone, are enough to set the mood of the text, to make us feel the anticipation of wondering what awful acts the speaker is about to unfold before us.

However, before beginning the story, the speaker addresses the "horror" of these events, describing them as "phantasm" that differs wildly from the natural and commonplace. He says that he believes that some greater intellect than his own might read his account and develop an understanding of these events and how they can be explained away logically. These statements help us to understand that the narrator himself believes that there is something supernatural at work in his story, that there are things that have happened to him which he cannot explain logically. Such a claim only increases our feeling of wonder and our sense that we are about to hear a strange and disturbing tale.

What is the mood in "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe?

The prevailing mood in "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe is one of unease and, later, disgust. Even at the beginning of Poe's story when the narrator is detailing his happy life and hasn't committed any violent acts, Poe shows that there's something rotten simmering under the surface. When the reader begins to understand what that narrator has done, disgust joins unease in creating the mood of the story. 

Poe sets the scene by having the narrator address the audience before beginning his tale. He says that "Tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul" which already shows that something is wrong; either the narrator has committed a terrible act or he is an innocent man about to die -- though his admission that he needs to unburden himself and that he's been tortured and destroyed by "mere household" events make it clear that he's likely not entirely innocent. Since the narrator indicates bad things are coming in his confessions, Poe has already created a sense of unease that haunts the reader even in the pleasant introduction of the man's story.

The man explains that he was always known as a nice person who especially loved his pets. He gets married and his wife, too, loves animals. Then he details his relationship with Pluto in what might have been a nice opening to the story, if the reader didn't already know that the man is condemned to die and that something bad is going to happen. The disconnect between the happiness in the beginning of the story, and the author's address before he started telling it, leaves a reader feeling uneasy.

The man explains that his personality changes. He's abusive to his wife. Then he comes home one night and murders his old cat, Pluto, who bit him a little when the narrator scared him with his drunken violence. He tortures Pluto by cutting out his eye. Now Poe's story tempers the unease with disgust; the reader is worried about what will happen next, while already disgusted with the narrator. 

The disgust grows even stronger as the narrator describes how he kills Pluto, then later attempts to kill another cat and instead purposefully murders his wife. His evil maintains the sense of unease throughout the story, and the disgust grows apace as the reader realizes exactly what kind of man the narrator is and that, despite his acknowledgment of his evil, he tries to hide his crimes until the police find his wife's body.

Mood, in literature, refers to the feeling created within the reader by the author's word choices and descriptions.  It's like the emotional atmosphere created by the author for the reader.  Immediately, when the story begins, the narrator tells us that he doesn't expect us to believe him.  He denies the idea that he could be "mad" or out of his mind: an immediate cause for concern -- why would he want us to know that, unless its validity may be doubtful?  He also tells us that he is going to die tomorrow; presumably he will be executed, for not many deaths are so precisely scheduled.  All of these details help to create a mood of both wonder and foreboding: this story will be dark.  The narrator continues, in just the first paragraph, to say that the events he is about to relate to us have "terrified -- have tortured -- have destroyed [him]."  Such a description of the story we are about to be told is chilling indeed.  

The mood of "The Black Cat" is one of perverseness, fright, and uneasiness.  The narrator is clearly mentally ill and is an unreliable narrator, so this definitely adds to the mood of the story!  There is also a feeling of suspense as the narrator leads up to the way it was discovered that he murdered his wife.  At the end of the story:

The black cat, hideous, hidden behind the wall, cemented in by the Narrator himself, is a striking symbol of the decay and corruption of the man's soul. His guilt, self-hatred, and need for punishment are all exposed when he bangs on the wall, prompting the black cat to howl, and revealing to the stunned policemen the secret hidden behind the wall. (eNotes)

What is the main tone of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"?

Your definition of tone is accurate. I think that the difficulty with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" is that his tone is ironic.

The definition of irony is the difference between what we expect to happen and what really happens. The narrator starts by eliciting our sympathy, along with establishing himself as a reliable narrator.

The narrator tries to convince the reader that the occurrence of every day incidents lead to his fate, even when he stabs the cat (Pluto) in the eye. By the time he kills the cat, the reader is beginning to seriously suspect that what the narrator is saying is not entirely accurate.

The narrator soon becomes an unreliable voice; we discover he is in jail waiting to be executed, but it is not until later that we realize he has committed murder—something we may not be totally prepared for. This is another "swoop" the plot takes as the narrator weaves his tale, even as he reports the image of the cat hanging from a noose burned onto his house's wall (which the author explains away) when he burns his own house.

The narrator brings a new black cat into his home. This cat, he later finds, is also blind; the white patch on its chest begins to resemble a gallows (in the narrator's mind), and the narrator is fearful of hurting the cat. However, one night when he swings an ax at the feline, his wife stops him, and he goes on to strike her head with the ax. This sudden action will probably at last convince most readers that the narrator is deranged.

In finding a place to hide the body, the narrator seals his wife's corpse into the wall of the basement. When the police finally arrive, the narrator (sure he won't be caught) begins to brag about the sturdiness of the foundation, but when he strikes the spot where the body is hidden, a sudden howl reverberates through the cellar. Opening it, they find the body and the cat who the narrator had mistakenly sealed into the cavity.

Here is the final irony: the cat that is so much like the murdered Pluto is the one who exposes the narrator as a murderer.

Perhaps we should be suspicious before we are. The narrator does all he can to remove himself from any blame. He tries to blame "a series of unfortunate events," and later intoxication, for the actions that have led him to this juncture. His seeming insanity is confusing as we try to follow his story as if he were not at all demented. What we think we learn at the story's beginning is very different that what we expect and discover at the end. The narrator's disturbed mind makes it difficult to follow the tale. Our confusion is not an accident: Poe has led us here.

Clearly the most ironic element in "The Black Cat" is the Narrator's own perversely unrealistic and distorted view of the horrible scenario that unfolds.

The poetic justice I see is that poorly abused Pluto's "replacement" is the means by which the narrator is exposed to the police.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" seeminly begins as a confessional on the part of Poe's signature unreliable narrator.  However, it is not long before the reader discerns the ironic overtones of this confessional.  In the first paragraph Poe's narrator declares "I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."  While the words blush, burn, and shudder suggest a feeling of shame, the use of "I pen" changes the emotions to ones directed to his act of writing about the incident, rather than the incident itself.  And, it is here that the irony enters.  For, the narrator questions not the act, but the story about the act as an atrocity.  As the reader considers, too, that the narrator has used a pen-knife to cut out the cat's eye, there is some mockery. By linking these two ideas together, the narrator, as author of the crime, seems to be mocking his reader as he pretends to be ashamed by his crime.  Indeed, he confesses to this mockery as he describes his "spirit of PERVERSENESS."  For, it is perverse for him to consider his narrative to be merely "a series of household events."  At any rate, this ironic tone continues to the end as the narrator condemns "these events" as the cause of his fate.