Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe example essay topic

"The Black Cat", by Edgar Allan Poe "The Black Cat", a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, is about a man who is in jail confessing to murdering his wife. He starts of by stating that he was happily married to a nice beautiful woman, and the couple had many animals. Among those animals was a black cat named Pluto and this cat is the narrator's favorite animal. The cat and the narrator established a great relationship and are almost inseparable. The narrator soon becomes an alcoholic and one day he returns from a town bar well intoxicated and tries to pet the cat. The cat tries to avoid him in fear of violence and when the man grabs the cat, it bites him in the hand.

Out of fury, the narrator cuts out one of his eyes. The next day the man realizes what he did and ends up feeling terrible. After a while he decides to kill the cat by hanging him because he cannot bear to see what his fury caused him to do. That same night his house burns down. A few days later, the narrator and his wife are in their new apartment and the narrator sees a black cat while sipping on some rum. This cat is a bit different because it has a white patch on its breast.

They decide to keep the cat but eventually, it started to remind him of the first cat. One day, while the narrator and his wife were walking down to the cellar, the cat followed them and it accidently tripped the narrator almost causing him to fall down. Out of rage, the man grabbed an axe and swung to hit the cat but his wife grabbed his arm to stop him. The man then turned and swung the axe towards his wife and struck her on the head and she fell dead to the ground. The cat left scared because of the commotion. The man decided to bury her body in the walls of the cellar since the cemented walls were always wet and easy to make a grave.

A couple of days later, the police came to investigate the disappearance of his wife and when the man showed them around the cellar, he banged on the wall were he buried his wife and a noise was made. The police were suspicious and they tore down the wall to find his wife's body and the cat sitting right on the top of her head. The narrator's fury and guilt lead him to killing his cat, murder his wife, and eventually confess to his actions. His alcoholism also contributed to his actions, which made his life full of guilt and remorse. I believe that Edgar Allan Poe actually lived this kind of life since he was a drunk himself. He probably wrote about actual events that he might have experienced.

He was a little crazy with a very big drinking problem. Poe, Edgar Allen. "Edgar Allen Poe Selected Tales". Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York 1998.