The Black Cat

The Black Cat

Whenever supernatural events occur, where the “very senses reject their own evidence” (p. 26, l. 3), one must ask a question: is it truly a paranormal event or am I simply being fooled? In search for the answer to this particular question a rational answer to the occurrences is often tried to be found. This is exactly what the man in the short story ‘The Black Cat’ by Edgar Allan Poe does – at least in the beginning of the story.
He tries to interpret several supernatural signs rationally. However, this sometimes results in some – although likely – very bizarre interpretations. After he hangs his cat in the garden, a fire burns down the house leaving only a single wall with the figure of a cat with a rope around its neck imprinted on it. This he interprets simply as the result of a scorched cat that has been thrown through the window to wake him up. However, as time passes, he begins to believe that powerful forces are at play. Not only does he feel that these forces affect his new cat, he also believes that they have an impact on him. He suspects that demonical forces influence him to perform the most horrific deeds. Firstly, he starts drinking, which is his own fault, he admits, but then more than the influence of alcohol causes him to tear out the cat’s eye – he is in that moment under the influence of a demon, he believes. Similarly, the spirit of perverseness causes him to hang the cat and a demonic rage causes him to kill his wife. Consequently, he feels that it is these demonic forces and the cat in particular that has consigned him to the hangman and that he is innocent.
However, these forces that are causing him to be evil are explained by himself, which the reader should be very aware of. The story is told through a 1st person narrator, him, and the interpretation of the events is therefore very likely biased. Additionally, it should be taken into consideration that these words are written by a man on the death row – he most likely...