SEMINAR (1/3 2011)
Form a hypothesis for the analysis of this story. You must consider themes and purpose. This will be the frame for our analysis.
Points to consider:
Find evidence for/examples of the unreliability of the narrator.
What does the black cat in the story symbolize? You may want to consider the significance of its name, Pluto.
Test
ReplyDeletePoe: The Black Cat
ReplyDeleteHypothesis: What is the story about? Central themes. Purpose.
Where in the text should we start? Narrator? Symbols? Language/style? Environment?
Notes:
Themes: Evil, alcoholism, insanity, violence, murder, love (?),
Narrator: Drinks, difficulty relating to other people and eventually animals. Why does he make this confession? The narrator feels fury, regret and horror. His soul untouched (p. 16, 8ff).
The spirit of perverseness: Commits a sin just because he knows he shouldn’t. Beyond the reach of divine mercy (p. 17). A man fashioned in the image of God (p. 19, l. 31) The good within him is destroyed. Tempts faith when the police investigate the cellar.
The fire (p. 17): He does not establish any sequence of cause and effect – then why mention it? Tries to explain it logically – not very likely!
Relationships: Man and brute: Animals can be trusted unlike people (p. 15). Wife: Married early, common love for animals – he grows to hate that in her (himself? The ability to love?), he grows to hate his wife – she and the cat become synonymous (?) When the wife takes to the cat the narrator turns against it. He hurts his wife throughout the story. Kills her (p. 20). Sleeps tight after the murder (p. 21).
The cat: Pluto (the go of death/the underworld – evil, uncontrolled, instinct…) He loves the cat but he cannot bear its trust in him and its unconditional love – doesn’t deserve it?
2nd cat (p. 18): Supernatural mark on the fur + missing an eye like Pluto (the fantastic). Connected to the wife – how (p. 18, l. 27)? Appears to come out of nowhere. His feelings change very gradually. Dread (p. 19, l. 11ff). Disappears after the murder. Ends up giving him away: Scream – the damned, horror and triumph (p. 22).
Symbolism: The cats are described as monsters from the point of view of the narrator. He is possessed by an inner evil, what compels him to commit his evil deeds (alcohol? The evil within? - spirit of perverseness?) It cannot be hidden inside the walls or hanged outside in the garden. It will come back and haunt him. The walls can be seen as the super-ego – the frame which holds the person together-it is always the crumbling or burning of the walls that end up giving him away.
Why walls????
"The influential literary critic Tzvetan Todorov introduced a concept of the “fantastic” in the early 1970s to discuss literature of horror, and the idea can be applied usefully to “The Black Cat.” The fantastic, he asserts, explores the indefinite boundary between the real and the supernatural. The fantastic is a literary category that contains elements of both the rational and the irrational. One of the fantastic elements in “The Black Cat” is the existence of the second cat—with the changing shape of its white fur and its appearance on the corpse behind the wall. These plot twists challenge reality, but they do not completely substitute a supernatural explanation for a logical one. It is possible that the plot twists derive only from the insanity of the narrator. As a result, the plot twists, like the fantastic, hover between the real and the supernatural. The resolution of the story is both rationally possible and tremendously unlikely; the cat could inhabit the basement walls, but it is difficult to believe that it would remain silently in the wall for a long time or go unnoticed by the overly meticulous narrator"