The Black Cat

Kimberly Davis

Mrs. Endicott

English 12CR

 February 6, 2014

The Black Cat

1 Chapter 12) Is That a Symbol? This chapter relates well to this story by the animals, they symbol human reasoning or mortality.

2 Chapter 11) More Than it’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence relates to The Black Cat, because of the cat and the narrator.

3 Chapter 24) And Rarely Just Illness relates to the story because the narrator is insane, yet that isn’t the least of his worries. He’s also an alcoholic.

4 Chapter 26) Is He Serious? And Other Ironies relates to the story because the narrator had hung a cat in which he had recently adored, not only did he kill the cat but it had returned from the dead to haunt him. As he tries to get the cat back he kills his own wife in the process. Not only by this point has the cat gotten the best of the narrator, but the cat also draws the police to where he has his wife corpse.

5 Chapter 14) Yes, She’s a Christ Figure does relates to this story. It relates because she tries to protect the cat to spare its life, but in the progress she gives her life to let the cat live its own life.

6. This conflict happens in the narrators home, in which he not only abuses his wife and pets physically or verbally, but also mentally.

7 Mainly when homicide is involved  in Poe's murder stories it requires animalistic elements in which animals kill, die, and then animal imagery provokes or informs the crimes committed between people. Pets and or animals have the chance to signal the lack of human reason and morality, but sometimes humanity tries to prove less rational themes. The tale behind “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is that Ourang Outang did it. The savage irrationality of the crime baffles the police, who cannot conceive of a motiveless crime or fathom the brute force involved. Duppin uses his superior analytical ability to confirm that the crime was not committed by human. During “The Black Cat,” Pluto’s murder results from the narrator’s loss of reason and rush into “irrationality,” reason’s inhuman antithesis. The story’s second cat behaves cleverly, leading the narrator into a more serious crime which is the killing of his wife, and then revealing him to the police. The role reversal irrational humans vs. rational animals indicates that Poe reflects murder a basically animalistic.

8. Self-vs. Alter Ego