The Black Cat – Summary
A Short Story of Violence, Murder, and Guilt by Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe is the account of a murder by a man who will be hung the following morning for his crime.
The narrator of the story sets out to write an account of household events, events that led him to murder his wife and resulted in his conviction and imminent death by hanging. The narrator states that he is not mad and he is sure that later people will view the story as a succession of ordinary cause and effect events, yet the narrator implies that there is a hint of the super-natural in the story he is about to share.
The narrator begins by giving an account of his childhood in order to convey to the listener that he had, at one time, been tenderhearted and loving. He mentions his fondness of animals and how he was so tender towards his animals that his friends made fun of him.
He married, while young, a woman whose disposition was compatible with his. She recognized his fondness for animals and brought many pets into their home. One pet in particular stood out, it was a large black cat. The cat was remarkable not only for his size but also for its apparent intelligence which led the narrator’s wife to reflect on a popular idea that people considered black cats to be witches in disguise. After the narrator reveals this interest in the cat’s ‘nature’ he quickly covers his tracks by saying that he shares the conversations simply because it occurred to him not because he placed in weight on it. They named the cat Pluto. Pluto became very attached to the narrator and followed him everywhere.
However, the narrator became an alcoholic and the result was that he became moody and violent. First, he abused the lesser pets such as the rabbits and the monkey. He admits that soon he was even violent towards his wife. For a while, however, Pluto was immune to the disintegration of the narrator’s personality. Soon, however, Pluto was no longer protected by his favored status. In a fit of anger, the narrator cut the cat’s eye out of its head. At first, the narrator felt remorse; he was soon able to drown the memory in alcohol.
The cat recovered but was wary of the narrator. The cat’s wariness irritated the narrator who out of a spirit of Perverseness hung the cat. The narrator claims that Perverseness is a part of all humans and that it is “one of the primitive impulses of the human heart...who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?”
On that same night, the narrator’s house and all his possessions were consumed by fire. The next day, on a piece of wall that remained standing (a piece of wall that stood at the head of the narrator’s bed), on-lookers found a gigantic cat as if graven in ‘bas relief’ upon the white surface of the plaster. The image had a rope around its neck.
The narrator was shaken by the vision but quickly puts together a ‘logical’ explanation for the image that was on the wall. Despite his reasoning, the narrator was haunted by the image of that cat and soon felt a need to acquire a similar cat to replace the old one. One night, while drunk, he found a suitable cat at a ‘den of more than infamy.’ He inquired after its owner as he intended it to purchase it. However, it belonged to no one. The cat followed him home.
The cat, like his predecessor, was missing an eye. Unlike his predecessor, the cat had a white marking on his chest that resembled the gallows. The cat became a favorite of the narrator’s wife but almost immediately, the narrator took an intense dislike to the animal. However, the more he detested the cat, the more closely the cat attached itself to him, and, in turn, the more he detested it. The narrator confessed that he got to the point that he wanted to kill the cat but the remembrance of Pluto and his crime staid his hand, as he feared the creature.
The narrator’s account breaks into superstitious ramblings and fear. He claims that it wasn’t a physical evil that he was afraid of. He rails against this beast who is after him—a man created in the image of the ‘High God.’ He mentions that the ‘feeble remnant’ of his goodness was engulfed by evil.
One day the narrator, his wife, and the cat descended the stairs into the cellar of the building where they lived. The cat tripped the narrator. The narrator was enraged and lifts an ax to kill the cat. However, his wife stopped the blow. This enraged the narrator further and he buried the ax in his wife’s brain.
The reader/listener clearly understands that the narrator is unreliable and at this point the narrator confirms what the reader already suspects. The murder was intentional. He supplies irrevocable evidence when he says that with the “hideous murder accomplished” he could now set about the task of concealing the body. He goes into detail about the various possibilities he considered before settling on walling her up in the basement. The narrator goes on to describe in minute detail the process of walling up his wife’s corpse and of removing all signs of activity in the basement. As the narrator relays the details of hiding the body and of the subsequent search by authorities, further evidence of his unreliability comes to light in his referring to killing his wife as “the assassination.”
The narrator seemed to feel that he had found peace. The cat was gone and the narrator was sure that no one would discover his secret. Inquiries and searches were made and no evidence was found. However, doubt must have lingered in the minds of the policeman. A second search was made at the house of the narrator. The narrator was confident that he would not be found out and wanted to make a boast to satisfy his own triumph, so he rapped sharply on the wall behind which his wife’s corpse was hidden and boasted about the solid build of the house. Immediately an inhuman wail emitted from the tomb.
The police quickly tore down the wall to find the rotten corpse of the narrator’s wife with the cat sitting on her head. The narrator then blames the cat for his situation saying cat was a beast ‘whose craft had seduced me into murder and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.’
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