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Philosophy in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"

Philosophy in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes is quoted as saying that life is “nasty, brutish and short” (Landry). This certainly turns out to be the case for the people and animals who live with the alcoholic, abusive, and murderous man in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” One shudders as he describes the horrific thoughts running through his mind. Even more terrible and shocking are the senseless acts of cruelty, and later murder, that he carries out upon his cat and wife. Edgar Allan Poe evokes a sense of terror within the reader by describing the man’s physical actions as well as his thought process, allowing the reader to perceive the overall effect of the grotesque within his short story.

The terrible actions that the man performs throughout the story are presented in an unsuspecting manner, which adds to the fright. He mentions that he abuses his wife and animals, with the exception of the black cat, Pluto. His pointing out of the abuse foreshadows what is about to occur in the story. When the man returns home in one of his usual drunken stupors he takes hold of the black cat’s neck “and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket” (Poe 97). This senseless act of cruelty makes the reader cringe as one can almost feel the pain the cat experiences as it loses one of its eyes. The eyes are one of the most sensitive parts of the body and the slightest irritation, such as sand getting into them, causes excruciating pain. However, grains of sand rubbing against the surface of an eye must pale in comparison to the pain the cat experiences as its eye is sliced out. A short while after cutting out the cat’s eye, an exact time period is not given, he goes outside and hangs the cat from the tree. One assumes that he is not drunk at the time of the hanging since it occurs in the morning and he would have had time to sleep off the previous night’s intoxication. This shocking turn of events with the hanging of his beloved cat is almost too stupefying to fathom. However, Poe does not stop at creating that astonishing action. The most terrifying of the man’s actions is that of the murder...

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