Analysis of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.doc

analysis of the black catby edgar allan poe when i read the fiction of edgar allan poe first time in high school, i was addicted in his fantastic world spontaneously. although i did not understand the connotation at that time, there is a power of magic that i was drenched in. the exciting plot development left me a deep impression. so i choose edgar allan poes composition to analyze since i have read the original edition of the story the black cat. 1. the introduction of this storythe black cat is a short story about murder, but it is not just a pure killing story. there were only four major characters, including the man, the mans wife, and two black cats. the protagonist who was noted for the docility and humanity of disposition kept so many pet and caressed them, but when he became intoxicated and intemperance, there is a series disaster happened to the pets besides his favorite pet, a black cat named pluto. after he killed pluto under his mad, another black cata very large onefully as large as pluto came to the protagonists life. finally the protagonist put his atrocity on his wife and killed her with the instrumentality of intemperance, then he concealed the body into a wall. but at last the another pluto make his evil revealed dramatically.the discription of the scenethe setting and plot development with its gothic style appeals to me. the whole story is under a strange, vicious atmosphere. to start with, the murder was happened in a cellar, a damp and gloomy place, which make people trembled with fear. any people who come into such a place without sunshine throughout the year would be in a great panic although there was nothing happened. then, the way of concealing the body is too appalling to accept. “i determined to wall it up in the cellar, as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.” the protagonist put up one wall to hide his wifes body in it. for most people, it is the first time to hear the statement, especially the statement is related to ancient monks. it can be a mysterious factor to the concealing. the last point, poe referred to drinking too many times, the first time that protagonist ill-treated pluto when he returned home, much intoxicated, from one of his haunts. he lost his head and, he was possessed by the fury of a demon so that he cut one of pluto eyes from the socket. what a brute action that he did to pluto. sympathy will emerges to people when they read the description of this atrocity. meanwhile, readers will also condemn the cruel from their heart. the last one, there is a conflagration took place in the protagonists bedroom on the night of the day on which pluto was died. this is so strange that the conflagration happened by coincidence. how it took place is ambiguous to explain to readers. maybe we should owe it to the will of heaven.2.the narratting skills“for the most wild yet most homely narrative which i am about to pen, i neither expect nor solicit belief. mad indeed would i be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.” this is the first sentence in this story. we can get information that the protagonist is recalling what he did. and the other sentence “my immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.” thus we seem to know something happened indeed and we need not to suspect if it or not. the first advantage is that the author can bring readers into the world of story easier. then when readers finished the reading and come back to taste the pale, they will find they knew the development of this story like the palm of their hands.the narrative is also the protagonist in the black cat. the first person narration of focus can make reader closer to protagonists heart inside. readers can feeling of the anger, mad, detest, and remorse more accurately. just like read the story for themselves. so the cruel partial description makes readers shudder extremely, the suffering from the pluto and the wife make readers easier to come into being sympathy, and the atrocity make readers feel detest severely.3. the symbolism means poe put much symbolism means in the story like his other novel. for one thing is the black cat. as poe penned in this story,“to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.” the protagonists wife at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition. maybe black cat will bring misfortune and bad luck. both of the two cats under poes pen, the protagonist loved and then killed, were black. for another thing is the name of cats. pluto. this is the roman god of the underworld . so what the black cat impressed reader most is hell, demon, wretches, something can be regarded as a deity with some magic power. the strangest symbol of the black cat is the gallows on its breast. the gallows can date back to a cruel torture which was popular in ancient. it was used to carry out the punishment.personal understanding to the protagonistthere is no doubt that the protagonist is an extremely brutal and cold-blood man. but it took a long process to change completely by himself. at the beginning, he is not so terrified to others. he was kind-hearted and moderate in his childhood and he loved animals very much. we can find it through the words that poe uses, “caress” and “cherish”. he wanted to have a kind heart to treat them with a good beginning. he regarded the sentiment between animals and him as a kind of warm existence. good times do not last long. something changed after he has been engrossed in alcohol. he became more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feeling of others day by day. this is a process to become cruel later. until he deliberately cut one of plutos eyes from the socket after drinking, he not only lost his head, but also his kindness. the time had coming, the protagonist completely knew what he had done, but when he saw the injured pluto, a complex feeling includes remorse, guilty, and detest. but the feeling of detest capture his mind overwhelmingly so that he slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree. although this most cruel deed was done, the tears still streamed from his eyes at the same time. this can be seen as symbolic of self-inflicted partial blindness to his own vision of moral goodness. however, we can find that his emotion changed totally when he killed his wife, it certainly that his target was the black cat but he vented his anger to his wife. so the death of his wife is innocent absolutely. meanwhile, his attitude after his killing embodied the acme of his evil. we can not see remorse or regret at all, only flaunt to what he did. there is no doubt that alcohol destroys the protagonists senses. the alcohol pushes the protagonist into fits of intemperance and violence, to the point at which everything angers him. both of pluto and his wife is the victim of his mad.4. personal understanding to the black cats to a certain extent, i would rather regard the two black cats as the same one, pluto.it is impossible no matter how resemble they are. pluto is a neutral character at the beginning of the story, but it becomes antagonistic in the protagonists eyes once the protagonist becomes an alcoholic. the cat was also vividly developed. at one point early in poes description, the narrator spends two paragraphs describing his then delightful pet. but as the story progresses be, both characters changed dramatically. the cat is dynamic in that it is hang, reappears with a white splotch on its chest, and has a different disposition than before. but when the protagonist found the later black cat in a tavern, i regard it as plutos soul.pluto acts three different characters to the master. pluto is innocent as a pet like other pathetic animals despite of he is the most popular one, he treated to his master with loyal and sincere, but what he get back is the ill-treated and death. pluto is also appeal to crime when he represent misfortune or something bad else. he enraged the master step by step, maybe it is not out of deliberate willing, but the intimate action what he showed to his master when his master is charged by alcohol is dangerous. pluto is an angle when he revealed the evil at last. if not pluto was hidden in the wall accidently, if not the miserable calls from pluto, the policeman never find the body. as what i said, there is a balance point between virtues and evil, that is “deserve it”. everything was happened because of the black cat, and it also end up with it eventually.5. something confused me what types of classify to this story is varied, such as horror fiction, mystery novel, whodunit, fantasy and so on. there still two point confused me to a certain extent. the one thing is the pattern only wall which was not collapsed in the conflagration. the analysis about the pattern made by the protagonist himself is fantastic in my eyes. there must be much coincidence in his mind, but it is too strange. and we can not find the reason why the conflagration happened, all of this leave a space to phantasy. the another thing is the outcome of the protagonist. at the end of this story, the policeman find the body by a voice from within the tomb, it is also mean that the policeman find the evil and guilty to the protagonist. but what would happen after that? if the man deserve punishment, why can he describe his crime later? or poe just want to emphasis the mans hopeless. in the same way, we can not find answer in the story what poe told us. bigger space left to imagine about it, with an endless savour.6. my own evaluations to this composition this short story easily achieved the effect that poe was looking for t