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Lecture on “The Black Cat” by Edgar
Allan Poe
THE
FIRST PERSON NARRATOR may be: openly lying, deliberately omitting important
information, distorting the truth, repressing the truth, or even
hallucinating: existing in a totally different reality. So how do we find the
truth? We must put on our detective caps and sift through the evidence.
1.
Where
is the narrator? What will happen to him the following morning?
2.
What
is the narrator’s implication here? What is he asking you to do?
“Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be
found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place --some intellect more
calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive,
in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary
succession of very natural causes and effects. “
3.
What
exactly is this guy saying in the following quote? With whom did he spend his
time instead of other children?
“From my infancy I was noted for the
docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so
conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of
animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.”
4.
What
is wrong with the following sentence?
“To those who have cherished an affection
for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of
explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable.”
5. Why did he marry his wife?
“I married early, and was happy to find in
my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality
for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most
agreeable kind.”
6.
After
describing his wife’s superstition about their beautiful black cat, the
narrator says,
“I
mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just
now, to be remembered.”
Why the
disclaimer? He didn’t mean to mention the fact that his wife believed that
cats were witches? What is this narrator up to?
7.
The
narrator expresses his love for the cat, but over their years together, he
emphasizes the gradual surrender to the “Fiend Intemperance…” Why did this
guy commit his horrible crimes? (At least, what would he have you believe was
the reason for his crimes?)
“I grew, day by day, more moody, more
irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to
use intemperate language to my wife.
At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course,
were made to feel the change in my disposition.”
What was this guy
doing to his pets? Why?
8.
Look
carefully at the moment when the narrator describes attacking his cat.
“One night, returning home, much intoxicated,
from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.
I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound
upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I
knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight
from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled
every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened
it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its
eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable
atrocity.”
Why does this
sick puppy do this to the cat? Look at the way he phrases it. Did he do it
because he was drunk?
9.
In
the following paragraph, the narrator defines the spirit of perverseness.
What does he mean when he describes his motives as ‘perverse’ Why, according
to him, do people commit horrible acts
of cruelty?
“And then came, as if to my final and
irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy
takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that
perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart --one of the
indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the
character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a
vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should
not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment,
to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow.”
10. While reading the following
section of the poem, look carefully at
exactly what happens on the night of the fire. The sequence of events is
impossible to believe (and he knows it.) What really happened? Then consider why
the narrator did it? What ultimate crime fascinates him?
“I am above the weakness of seeking to
establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the
atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts --and wish not to leave even a
possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins.
The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a
compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house,
and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in
great measure, resisted the action of the fire --a fact which I attributed to
its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were
collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it
with every minute and eager attention. The words "strange!"
"singular!" and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I
approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a
gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous.
There was a rope about the animal's neck. When I first beheld this apparition
--for I could scarcely regard it as less --my wonder and my terror were
extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had
been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this
garden had been immediately filled by the crowd --by some one of whom the
animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window,
into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me
from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my
cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which,
had then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, accomplished the
portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my
reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact 'just
detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.”
11. During the next section of his
story, the narrator wants us to believe that the dead cat Pluto comes back to
life with a devilish mark on his head which eventually assumes the shape of a
hangman’s noose….. RIGHT! What new plan is he formulating?
12. Look at the details of the ‘accidental’
killing of the narrator’s wife. He blames it all on that darn cat! What is
really going on?
“One day she accompanied me, upon some
household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty
compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and,
nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my
hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved
instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by
the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than
demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain.
She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set
myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the
body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by
night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects
entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute
fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave
for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in
the well in the yard --about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the
usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house.
Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of
these. I determined to wall it up in the cellar --as the monks of the middle
ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was
well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been
plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the
atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a
projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up,
and made to resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily
displace the at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as
before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this
calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the
bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I
propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole
structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair,
with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster could not even possibly
be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the
new brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The
wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The
rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around
triumphantly, and said to myself --"Here at least, then, my labor has
not been in vain."
13. In the terrifying conclusion of
the story, the narrator leads the police to the very spot in the cellar where
he has walled up the dead body of his murdered wife. What happens when he
raps on the wall with his cane? Read this passage very carefully: how did
this moment make the narrator feel? How does it make him FEEL to describe
this moment once again on the eve of his execution? How is he reacting to
your response?
“I rapped heavily, with a cane which I
held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood
the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from
the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk
into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! --by a cry,
at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly
swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and
inhuman --a howl --a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such
as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the
damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak.
Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon
the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In
the next, a dozen stout arms were tolling at the wall. It fell bodily. The
corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the
eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary
eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder,
and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the
monster up within the tomb!”
14. OK, Sherlock, put the clues
together. What has this narrator been up to all along? How has your response
to the conclusion fit into his deranged plan?
Write a paragraph
in which you describe the true intention of the narrator in Poe’s “The Black
Cat”.
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