“But my disease grew upon me –
for what disease is like alcohol!”
When the narrator refers to alcohol as a disease, he is trying to convince the reader that it is not his fault. He is losing the responsibility of his actions..
The influence of alcohol made the narrator become very violent towards his wife and animals.
“ At length I even offered her personal violence.”
The narrator, although violent towards others, kept from maltreating his cat, Pluto.
The narrator tells us he grew more and more violent and fickle. As he did so, his favourite animal, which he had restrained from mishandling, started to experience the effects off his ill temper.
The narrator tells us that one night after an evening in a public bar, he came home to have Pluto caressing around his legs. The narrator took a knife to Pluto’s eye and gruesomely cut it from its socket.
“…and deliberately cut one of its eyes, from the
socket!”
This shows the narrator is inconsistent, one minute he is normal, the next he is a violent drunk. The narrator has little control over his actions, maybe because alcohol has had too much of an influence over him. Although the narrator goes through a phase of cruelty, when he wakes up sober in the morning, he regrets what he had done the night before.
“I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.”
When the narrator realised what he had done, he ‘drowned his sorrows’ with more alcohol.
The story goes on to the narrator killing his cat by hanging him on a tree branch.
“ This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow”
The deed was committed in ‘the spirit of perverseness’ The narrator, even though regretting hurting his cat, found some kind of pleasure in causing pain to the creature. The night the sin had been performed, a fire broke out in the narrator’s house. After the fire had died out, he went back to examine the ruins, and found a cat engraved into the wall above his bed. After this, the narrator tells the reader how he thinks the picture appeared there, but leaves it open to question. This gives the impression that it could be some kind of paranormal activity from the dead cat.
The narrator talks a lot about the paranormal, hinting that this could be the answer to all the event’s causes. The narrator is, yet again, denying all responsibility for any crimes he has committed.
After all of the incidents had died down, the narrator gained a ‘half- sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse.’ I think the narrator actually did regret killing his favourite pet, but wouldn’t admit to it as it could be seen as a weakness. From then on, when the narrator went into public houses, he looked out for a black cat resembling his old one.
One night, on one of his frequent ‘haunts about town’, he was sat drinking when he looked up and there was a black cat of the same build as Pluto, although the cat had a large which patch on it’s stomach which Pluto had never had. The cat even had an eye missing! The narrator asked people around the area if they knew of the cat, but none did. The cat had mysteriously appeared. The narrator took the cat home and embraced it, just as he used to Pluto. As time passed the narrator grew more and more afraid of the cat, more and more scared of the picture forming on it’s stomach.
The narrator was scared that the white marking was turning into a picture of gallows.
“, the image of a hideous – of a ghastly thing- of the GALLOWS!”
As the reader already knows the narrator is a drunk and may hold some superstition about cats, this leaves them to question if the picture is really there or if it is a figure of the narrator’s imagination.
Up until this point in the story, the narrator had only mentioned his wife once. I think that the narrator does not believe his wife to be an important aspect of his life; therefore he does not mention her as much. The narrator tells us that on a ‘household errand’ he murdered his wife. He says that as he swung the axe, aiming for the cat, his wife laid her hand on his arm. His anger, which had been building, was suddenly unleashed as he brought the axe to the woman’s head.
The narrator rationally decided to wall up the body in the cellar.
Obviously the police investigated the disappearance of the narrator’s wife, but as the narrator had walled up the carcass so well, the police never found the body.
After this horrific event, the narrator was intent on killing the cat, which had caused him to kill his wife. The cat, which has been blamed for this evil deed, is obviously not responsible for the death. The narrator is trying to convince the reader that the cat held responsibility to the woman’s death; therefore it would not be his fault. The cat was nowhere to be found. Just as quickly as the cat had appeared, it disappeared. Giving a sense of mystery about the cat.
On the fourth day after the killing of his wife, the narrator’s house was again, searched. This time while looking in the cellar, the police heard a wailing noise coming from behind a wall. They broke away the bricks and rubble, finding inside, the corpse of the narrator’s wife and the black cat.
From there on the narrator is arrested, trialed and found guilty. The narrator believes himself to be innocent; he places all responsibility on the cat.
I do not think that the narrator gives the reader ground to trust him.
The story is defiantly not about the cat, but of this one man’s descent into madness. He uses the cat as an excuse for all things he has done, he loses the responsibility and places it onto the cat.
I think that the narrator is very unstable, but I do not think he realises it, or if he does realise it, won’t admit to it. The reader has already seen that the narrator does not hold himself responsible for his alcohol habits and also for the killing of the cat and his wife; all responsibility is placed onto the cat. Another fact, which suggests the narrator is mentally unstable, is that he saw gallows form on the stomach of the black cat. This could be an image in his mind; his sub-conscience telling him that if he allows alcohol to influence him in the way it does he will end up committing a horrible crime. I also think that the lone reason for his descent into madness is his alcohol addiction, the narrator says he used to be kind and good-natured so something must have changed his views and attitudes.
By Rebecca Dunbar 10X2
