SETTING
Place / Places
The story opens in the cell of a prisoner the
day before he is to be executed by hanging. After introducing himself to
readers as a man who underwent a horrifying experience, the prisoner writes
down the details of this experience, which led to his imprisonment and
scheduled execution. The events in his tale are set at his home and in a
tavern.
Time
Although these events take place over several
years, the recounting of them in writing takes place on a single day in the
narrator's prison cell.
CHARACTERS
Narrator: Prisoner scheduled for execution.
His loathing of a cat he once loved leads to his commission of a capital crime.
Narrator's
Wife: Woman of
agreeable disposition who likes animals and obtains many pets for her husband.
First
Black Cat: Cat
named Pluto that loves the narrator but irritates him when it follows him
everywhere.
Second
Black Cat: Cat that
resembles the first black cat and may be a reincarnation of the latter—or so
the narrator may think.
Policemen: Officers who investigate the
happenings at the home of the narrator.
Servant: Person working in the narrator's
household.
POINT OF VIEW
•
Who is telling the story?
The narrator tells the story in first-person
point of view. He is obviously deranged even though he declares at the outset
of the story that "mad am I not." He tells readers that excessive
drinking helped to bring on his erratic, violent behavior. (It may be that the
drinking worsened an existing mental condition.) The narrator tells his story
as he sees it from his demented point of view.
•
Why, in your opinion, did Poe not give a name to the narrator?
As in many of his other short stories, Poe does
not name the narrator. A possible explanation for this is that Poe wanted the
unnamed narrator to represent every human being, thereby enhancing the
universality of the short story. In other words, the narrator represents anyone
who has ever acted perversely or impulsively—and then had to pay for his deed.
MAIN THEMES
• Perversity
A human being has a perverse, wicked side that
can goad him into committing evil deeds. The narrator says it was this inner
demon that brought about his downfall.
Who
has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action,
for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual
inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law,
merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say,
came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex
itself -- to offer violence to its own nature -- to do wrong for the wrong's
sake only -- that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I
had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.
• Alcohol Abuse
Heavy drinking can bring out the worst in a
human being. To be sure, alcohol abuse alone did not cause the narrator's
violent behavior. But, as he readily acknowledges, it certainly put him in a
foul mood.
• Vengeance
Evil
deeds invite vengeance. Pluto gets even, the narrator indicates, by causing the
fire that burns down the narrator's house. And, if the second cat is indeed
Pluto reincarnated, Pluto sweetens his revenge by alerting police with his
crying behind the wall hiding the corpse of the narrator's wife.
• The Power of Suggestion
A weak, unbalanced human psyche may be highly
vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Consider that the narrator's wife had
suggested, apparently in jest, that Pluto was more than a harmless black cat.
In
speaking of his [the cat's] intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a
little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient
popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that
she was ever serious upon this point -- and I mention the matter at all for no
better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
In fact, the apparently deranged narrator may
well have taken his wife's comments seriously.
