What is the main theme of the black cat?
Major Themes Justice and truth: The narrator tries to hide the truth by walling up his wife’s body but the voice of the black cat helps bring him to justice. Superstition: The black cat is an omen of bad luck, a theme that runs throughout literature. Murder and death: Death is the central focus of the entire story.
What does the Cat in the Black Cat symbolize?
The black cat symbolizes the state of the narrator’s soul-which is black, mutilated, and decaying. The black cat is symbolic because it is the cat’s meowing that draws attention to the wall, and the perverse pleasure the black soul of the narrator takes in believing he has gotten away from it.
What is important about the title of the Black Cat?
The title prepares to the reader to be on the lookout for the black cat – it suggests that the cat is important to the story. All these are important aspects of the story (though by no means the only aspects), and all are connected to the cat (or cats).
What is the plot in the Black Cat?
The story’s narrator is an animal lover who, as he descends into alcoholism and perverse violence, begins mistreating his wife and his black cat Pluto. When Pluto attacks him in self-defense one night, he seizes the cat in a fury, cuts out one of its eyes, and hangs it.
How does the black cat end?
The story ends when the police find the dead body of the man’s wife, with the cat on her head. On the one hand it’s outrageous, and even funny. At the same time, when we think about just how close these details can come to our own reality, it’s sad and frightening. There is always some bizarre tragedy in the news.
What is the setting in the Black Cat?
The setting of “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is at first a jail cell, from which the narrator relates his perverse actions in each of the homes he had previously inhabited. These actions were the result of spending his time in taverns, abusing alcohol.
Who is the narrator in the Black Cat?
Plot. The story is presented as a first-person narrative using an unreliable narrator. He is a condemned man at the outset of the story. The narrator tells us that from an early age he has loved animals; he and his wife have many pets, including a large, beautiful black cat (as described by the narrator) named Pluto.
How is the narrator in the Black Cat unreliable?
In this tale, the narrator is deemed unreliable due to his displays of questionable sanity. And though he makes some effort to insist he is sane, one wonders whether he is truly insane or suffers some form of psychopathy – which is not altogether the same thing.
How does Pluto die in the black cat?
Thinking Pluto didn’t want to hang out with him, he grabs the cat and cuts his eye out with a pen-knife. One morning, not long after the eye-gouging, the narrator is overcome with a perverse impulse. He hangs Pluto from a tree in his garden, murdering him.
What was ironic about the two cats in the Black Cat?
The irony in “The Black Cat” occurs after the narrator cuts out one the eyes of his cat Pluto. It is ironic that when the cat had the use of both eyes, it didn’t see the narrator’s true persona; however, once the cat loses an eye, for the first time it sees its owner for who he really is.
Where is her body placed the black cat?
How did he dispose of the body? He put her body in a wall of the cellar and built a new plaster wall in front of the body.
Is there one or two cats in the Black Cat?
Both of the cats in the story are identical except for one trait. They are both very big, black furred, and beautiful. Both cats are also missing an eye. Lastly, both cats are very affectionate for their owner, following him around and rubbing his legs for attention.
What does Pluto symbolize in the Black Cat?
The name of the narrator’s first cat, Pluto, is also the name of the Roman god associated with death; he is the equivalent of the Greek god, Hades, the Lord of the Underworld. Pluto is, then, heavily associated with darkness and death.
What happens to the new cat in the black cat?
The white mark on the second cat takes the shape of the gallows and reminds the narrator of the hanging of the first cat. The gallows is the place where a person is executed by hanging. The narrator actually hung the cat, which he had mutilated by gouging out one eye, from a tree.
What happens to the wife in the Black Cat?
The wife of the narrator of “The Black Cat,” she shares his love of animals and fills their house with pets. Though she sticks by the narrator despite his abuse and murder of Pluto, their cat, the narrator ultimately kills her after she stops him from kill the second black cat that mysteriously appears in their life.
How did he conceal the body?
The narrator picked up an axe and tried to kill the cat with it but his wife stopped him and in his fit of rage he turned to her and buried to axe in her head. How did he conceal the body? Behind the cellar wall. Because he was proud of killing his wife and hiding her and fooling the police.
What is the name of the black cat?
Figaro – the adorable black cat in “Pinocchio.” Bagheera – the black panther in “The Jungle Book.” Binx – the immortal black cat in “Hocus Pocus.”
Why did the narrator get caught by the police in the black cat?
As it turned out, the narrator accidentally buried the cat inside the wall when he was sealing his wife in the wall. In the end, his distorted view of reality and his overconfidence is the reason why he is caught.