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What are some examples of suspense in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"?

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Suspense in "The Black Cat" arises through several key moments: the narrator's initial violence towards his cat, Pluto, foreshadows further cruelty. Tension mounts with the introduction of a second one-eyed cat, symbolizing inevitable retribution. The suspense peaks during the police search of the cellar, where the discovery of the narrator's wife's body seems imminent. The unexpected revelation of the cat's presence behind the wall ultimately exposes the narrator's crime.

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After the narrator has cut out the eye of his cat, Pluto, he feels some remorse and horror at his behavior, and the cat wisely avoids him as they coexist. However, once the narrator announces, "and then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS," readers understand that the narrator will inflict further violence upon the cat—which of course he does, once the suspense has built.

When the narrator encounters a second black cat as he is out drinking one night and the cat befriends him, readers understand that this will be a fateful meeting and that in some way the narrator will be made to pay for what he has done to Pluto. The suspense builds as the narrator confesses that he quickly grows to loathe the cat, which is, ironically, missing an eye. The cat's affection builds the narrator's fear and loathing as...

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it climbs over him and he chronically finds it underfoot.

As the police repeatedly search the narrator's cellar, the suspense builds: will they discover the body of his murdered wife where he has placed her inside the wall? The last bit of suspense in the story is the question of what is making the sound from her tomb; it is, of course, the cat, which gives the murderer away to the police.

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In "The Black Cat," how does Poe develop the narrator to create suspense and tension?

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 nature:

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.

As a young man, the narrator marries young and finds a wife who makes him happy because she possesses a disposition "not uncongenial with my own." Because she notices how much her husband loves animals, she takes the opportunity to procure several pets for him. He prefers a large and "sagacious" black cat over the others, and Pluto, as he names it, becomes his favorite pet—even a playmate. For several years this cat follows him about the house.
But, when the narrator begins to drink, his disposition alters and he becomes impaired in empathy. While he remains rational, the narrator loses any affection for his pets; in fact, he is abusive and neglectful towards them. He also turns his abuse upon his wife. Still, he restrains himself for awhile around his favorite pet, Pluto. But, one evening when the cat bites him slightly, the drunken narrator describes a flight of his soul from his body:

...a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame.

Then, with his pocket-knife, he cuts one of the cat's eyes from the socket. The horror of this act certainly creates suspense and tension in the narrative as the reader wonders what may occur next.

After some time, Pluto recovers, but he flees in terror from the narrator whenever the man gets near him. The narrator states that he feels himself overcome with "the spirit of perverseness." He feels a strong urge to do wrong for "wrong's sake only"; so, one morning he slips a noose around the cat's neck and hangs it.

After his house burns and the cat is found somehow inside the house, although he has hanged it in the garden, the narrator begins to feel not remorse, but some regret for having killed Pluto. Because of this regret, he finds a cat that resembles his first pet. However, he begins to dread the new cat when he realizes that it, too, is missing an eye. At this point, the narrator begins to descend into the darkness of irrationality, and tension is generated in the story.

One day as the narrator goes down the steep stairs of his cellar, the cat follows him and nearly trips him. This act "exasperated [him] to madness." He lifts an ax to strike a blow at the cat, but, instead, his wife arrests his swing. Flying into a rage "more than demoniacal," the narrator embeds the ax in the brain of his wife. Once this happens, the narrator acts with "entire deliberation." Like a psychopath, he remains rational and very aware of his actions: "Many projects entered my mind." The narrator finally decides to bury his wife in a projected area where a false chimney or fireplace may have been, but has been filled up. After having displaced the bricks and placing the corpse inside, he walls her in, but later comments, "The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little."

Here, then, the tension definitely increases as the reader wonders what actions are next. When the police come to his house, the narrator "felt no embarrassment whatever." In fact, when the officers can find no evidence of wrongdoing, the narrator observes,

The glee in my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say a word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

In his boldness, then, which is typical of a psychopath, he raps upon the brickwork where his wife's corpse stands. The tension increases here until "a howl, a wailing shriek" issues from behind the wall. For there atop the wife's head sits the

...hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

Still feeling no remorse for his behavior, the narrator exhibits the antisocial behavior of a psychopath in this suspenseful and tense narrative.

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What suspenseful moments does Edgar Allan Poe create in "The Black Cat"?

The suspense in the narrative of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" begins with the narrator's declaration that he will die on the following day. 

In the exposition of this story, the narrator proposes to put before his audience what he calls a series of "mere household events." Nonetheless, suspense is generated in the next sentence as he declares that these events "have terrified, have tortured, have destroyed me," and they have produced horror in his mind, although they may be nothing but "natural causes and effects" to someone else.

As the story continues, the narrator admits that he began to drink heavily, and he underwent a personality transformation. For instance, he spoke cruelly to his wife, and he even committed acts of violence against her. The narrator mentions that he had a cat named Pluto with which he established a "friendship." At first, he did not harm the cat, but after the "fury of a demon instantly possessed [him]," he took the poor cat by the throat and cut one of its eyes out of the socket. Later on, he hanged it by the neck.

"...with tears streaming from my eyes...I knew that it had loved me and given me no reason of offense--hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin, a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul...beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of...God."

After his house strangely caught fire that night, the narrator saw that a crowd gathered around "a dense wall" of the house. When the narrator approached this wall, he discovered "in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat...with a rope around the animal's neck." Haunted by this vision of the cat, the narrator discovered another cat who closely resembled Pluto. He offered to pay for the cat, but the landlord replied that he had never seen it before. Oddly enough, the cat followed him home. However, the narrator soon developed an aversion to this cat because he discovered that this feline, like Pluto, was missing an eye. Ironically, the more the narrator was repulsed by the cat, the more fond of the narrator the cat became. Strangely, too, the few white hairs on the cat's chest increased until they resembled a gallows, an ominous thing. At this point the reader wonders about the significance of these occurrences, and more suspense is generated.

One day the cat followed the narrator down steep steps, tripping him and enraging him. He lifted an axe to kill it, but his wife reached up and stayed his hand. Furious that she interfered, the narrator "buried the axe in her brain." Then he tried to hide the woman's body by walling it up in the cellar. Of course, the reader is in suspense, wondering what will happen next.

After this burial, the narrator seeks the cat, but it is nowhere to be found. When it fails to appear, the narrator feels his "future felicity is finally secure." After four days, the police appear. Making a careful inspection of the house, they descend into the cellar. The narrator watches with a calm heart as the police examine the cellar. In an act of bravado, the narrator points to the walls as well-constructed, pounding on those that are directly in front of his wife's dead body. Suddenly there is a "howl, a wailing shriek, half of horror and half in triumph." For an instant, those on the stairs stand motionless. Then, "a dozen arms tear at the wall" until the wife's corpse falls forward. Upon its head sits the cat that the narrator says "seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman."

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