Ralph Emerson once wrote, "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book." Edgar Allan Poe acquired the ability to write Gothic horror through the tragedies that existed in his life. At three years old Poe lost his mother and father. Grief and sadness overwhelmed Poe's childhood and eventually his literary style. "By temperament and mournful personal experience, Poe was drawn into the contemporary cult of death" (Kennedy 111-33.) In his shocking and lurid tales of horror, "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe reveals his obsession with death and suffering through the development of his characters and the shocking situations he exposes.…
“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.” In Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, he often uses the common gothic techniques of a grotesque character, guilt, and unreliable narrators to convey his story. Poe manipulates his settings and mood to create an uneasy and scared feeling within the reader. He also includes allusions to his own life which included alcoholism, gambling, and the many deaths of family members creating a personal tone to the stories. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe is a better horror story than William Wilson because of Poe’s use of techniques, setting, and mood.…
His most well know works showcased his depression, in both The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat he showed how his sadness had driven him to insanity. In both these stories, the unnamed narrator, Poe says that he has an unexplainable hatred toward something in The Tell Tale Heart he when contemplating why he wanted the old man dead he stated “He had the eye of a vulture -- a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” this shows that the narrator is not mentally stable as he wants to kill a man just because of the way his eye…
In this paragraph, I will talk about the story, “The Black Cat”. In the beginning of the story it shows how the narrator was a very happy child and that he loved animals very much. He married early and got a cat named ‘Pluto’. After a while he turned into an alcoholic, which made him maltreat his wife, and pets, except he restrained himself of mistreating Pluto his cat. One day he came home intoxicated. He noticed that Pluto was avoiding him. He seized the cat, and in response, Pluto gave him a slight wound with his teeth. Then the narrator cut out one of Pluto’s eyeballs. After that incident Pluto avoided the narrator even more. Then one morning, with tears in his eyes, he put a noose…
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849), lived to be 40 years old. During his 40 years of living he had to go through many deaths of his loved ones. In addition, being abandoned by his father and foster father. Poe lost his mother, wife, and foster mother all to tuberculosis. He was devastated, lost and didn’t know what to do. Leading him to attempting suicide after his wife died. Instead of killing himself, he took his agony out in his writings. Edgar Allan Poe wrote approximately sixty-nine stories and poems. It has been seen that Mr. Poe has made a collection of similarities in his stories connecting to what he has gone through in life. As some of his most famous stories “Annabel Lee”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The…
Born in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe's work was a product of mysterious life. Poe used many literary techniques along with influence from his experiences to pioneer the horror and mystery genres to create chilling tones. In the short stories “The Black Cat”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “the Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses often demented characters, rich symbolism, as well as unique perspectives to convey themes from his own life and build his stories effects.…
Edgar Allan Poe is a writer of many famous poems and stories. These writings, for example, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “Alone” are influenced by the events in Poe’s life and include many similarities with each other. These similarities include isolation, involvement of a sickness, a feeling of fear, and the death of a character. The stories share these qualities because of important events that happened throughout Poe’s life. Poe’s mother died when he was 2 years old, and his wife died in 1847. He had no friends, no job, and very little money most of his life. These events showed that Poe was isolated in his life, like how the characters are in his stories. Poe’s wife dying was a traumatic and stressful experience for him.…
“The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are two of the most horrific masterpieces in literature. Edgar Allen Poe was a writer who knew how to capture his reader with bone chilling horror. Despite the many differences, analyzing the true meaning reveals many similarities. The characters in both “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” display their unstable minds, attempt to rationalize their crimes, show the reader the true horror of what they have done, and cannot escape their guilt for their crimes.…
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author and poet whose forte was writing mystery and horror stories. Many know of Edgar Allan Poe as the “Father of the Detective Story,” which nickname he earned for his mysterious detective fiction tales such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue().” Before switching genres from dark romanticism to detective tales, Edgar Allan Poe published “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,” which was a tale of fear and horror. Edgar Allan Poe’s style varied throughout his lifetime. Some of his achievements include being considered the creator of the modern horror tale, science fiction, and the detective story(). Understanding Edgar Allan Poe’s unusual and difficult life is significant to understanding his puzzling writing style in which in all ways was very mysterious.…
Edgar Allan Poe was an author in the 1800’s; known for his scary stories and poems. He wrote terrifying stories and poems. Some of his most popular stories are the pit and the pendulum, the tell-tale heart, and the black cat. “The pit and the pendulum” are about a man who goes crazy because he is being tortured. “The tell-tale heart is a man who doesn't like the old man's eye that he takes care of he gets rid of it by cutting his body up. The black cat was about a man who abused his wife and animals. Poe shows imagery by making his readers scared.…
Edgar Allan Poe, whose personal torment so powerfully informed his visionary prose and poetry, is a towering figure in the history of American literature. A Virginia gentleman and the son of itinerant actors, the heir to great fortune and a disinherited outcast, a university man who had failed to graduate, a soldier brought out of the army, a husband with an unapproachable child-bride, a brilliant editor and low salaried hack, a world renowned but impoverish author, a temperate man and uncontrollable alcoholic, a materialist who yearned for a final union with God. His fevered imagination brought him to great heights of creativity and the depths of paranoiac despair. Yet although he produced a relatively small volume of work, he virtually invented the horror and detective genres and his literary legacy endures to this day.…
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” the narrator experiences mental health issues and drinking problems. His obsession is his cat named Pluto, his favorite animal out of the many he owns. He described him as "Pluto... was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house"(Poe page4). This quote reveals how much he loved and cared his black cat. He is talking about Pluto in recognition of his best friend…
In Poe’s “ The Black Cat” The narrator is married early , One night the narrator comes home intoxicated and gets the feeling his cat is resenting him, “Filled with Anger” he cuts his “Beloved cat” Pluto eye out and hangs the dead animal. Soon his wife sees it action the next day and he kills her as well. Not long after the horrendous murders. The police finds the bodies hidden in the wall and the house is burned down."This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil-and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own--yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own--that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimeras it would be possible…
The story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is a story based on the phenomenon’s he’d do when he was intoxicated therefore not in his right mind. Not content with the multiple events that happened in his house, he was abashed nevertheless disgusted with himself. You’d never think he’d come to avail such a trait as a result of being an animal person with a kind heart. In his younger years he found a girl that shared the same bond as him with animals consequently he married her. One out of the abounding animals they had together was a black cat named Pluto, he wasn't like any other cat. Smart as well as eminently intelligent, always following him around everywhere he would come about. But one night he came home drunk and thought Pluto resisted…
Though he loves Pluto, the narrator begins to suffer from violent mood swings, predominantly due to the influence of alcohol. He takes to mistreating not only the other animals but also his wife. During this uncontrollable rage, he spares only Pluto. After returning home quite drunk one night, the narrator lashes out at Pluto. Believing the cat has avoided him, he vengefully grasps the cat, only to be bitten on the hand. In demonic retaliation, the narrator pulls a penknife from his pocket and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes. Though the narrator wakes the next morning with a partial feeling of remorse, he is unable to reverse the newly ominous course of his black soul. Ignored for certain now by the wounded cat, the narrator soon seeks further retaliation. He is overwhelmed by a spirit of PERVERSENESS, and sets out to commit wrong for the sake of wrong. He hangs Pluto from the limb of a tree one morning.…