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Jessica Ramos Lopes

Professor Steven Tracy
The Gothic in American Literature
June 24, 2017

The Black Cat: Gothic Approach

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the short story The Black Cat by Edgar Allan
Poe in a gothic perspective. It is our main aim to identify some of the gothic characteristic in
the story. By doing so, we want to understand better the traditional elements that help
construct a gothic story.

Key words: Edgar Poe; Gothic; The Black Cat;

Introduction
When we thing about gothic it is necessary to look at the literature of the 18thcentury,
period in which the gender became popular. It is our understanding that to better comprehend
gothic we must see it as a phoneme of going back to the past, to question the present.
In this gender, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most well know writers in American
literature. Poe uses a kind of psychological terror in his works. They are often narrated in the
first person and his characters live between madness and lucidity. These characters suffers
from some kind of illness or had done something horrible.
Poe’s literary works is almost all related to mystery, terror or death. His intention is to
cause a reaction in the reader. No word or image happens in the text by chance. He believes in
the various meanings that art can have.
In the first part of this paper, we will present some of the main characteristic of gothic
literature. To do that, we relied on theoretical works publish on the internet. In the second
part, we present our analyses of the short story, trying to identify the feature in the text The
Black Cat.

Gothic in Literature
According to Pang et al. (2015), the term gothic came from Germany with the Gods, a
barbarian people that was extinguish in 700 A.C. the first time that this work appeared it was
related to medieval architecture. Term use to describe a style of building that included
gargoyles, scenes of hell, and souls in torment.
In the 18th century, gothic is understood as a part of romanticism, which was a
reaction to the illuminist. For many gothic is a sub gender of the romantic era, thus both share
the love for dark and mystery.
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We can say that Romantism was a response to the strong rationalism of the illuminist
era. During this period, the world suffers deep transformation at all levels: political, economic
and intellectual. The esthetic brought by romanticism and gothic was the opposite of this
rationalism. This literature is characterized by the freedom of thought, spontaneity, a mix of
rational and irrational, natural and unnatural, perfection and imperfection.
The Castle of Otranto (1764): a Gothic Story by Horace Walpole is considered the
first novel of this gender. Gothic Literature aim to describe the fears an dramatize the
insecurities of a society scared with the fast changes that the 18 century brought to the way of
live.
Gothic Fiction wants to say what cannot be said, what cannot be seen, wants to get
way from the society rules. To accomplish that, they created a fantastic world opposite to
reason.
Some of the characteristics of this literature is scenery with medieval castles,
churches, forest, and melodramatic characters. The literary works includes the psychology of
terror, such as fear, madness, body transformation, ghosts, demons, supernatural, perversity,
women in dangerous. The main objective is to involve the reader in this mystery atmosphere,
with tense and suspense.
This kind of literature challenge the reason by the occurrence of an extraordinary
event. Gothic literature deals with the dark and gloomy side of life. One of the feature that
allows the reader to identify this kind of literary work, such as the time in which they were
written. There is no need for a gothic work to have all the characteristic to be considered
gothic.
The plot usually based on mystery and suspense could build in a disappearance; a
constant felling of fear or even a feeling of terror and the unknown. Could occurs also
supernatural facts like apparition, objects moving, strong sounds or strange events. The
characters are more likely to show fear, angry, sadness, terror what make them do
unspeakable things.
Women in gothic literature often are alone and in dangerous, without protection.
When that is the case, normally they are the main character of the story.
Metonymy is use to represents feelings, for example, the rain is associated to sadness.
Others example are the wind blowing, doors making strange sounds, the sound of steps
approaching, dogs, and so on.
The vocabulary has an important role creating the gothic felling. For illustrate
mystery, words such as ghosts, secret, enchantment, magic, hell, diabolic help the reader to
fell this atmosphere.
In the other hand, to illustration of fear, words like agony, despair, terror, melancholy,
tears are use. To indication of rush, words such as frenetic, anxious, suddenly. Angry is
display by words like irritable, furious, violence.
Another aspect that call our attention is the fact that almost all gothic literary work the
events occurs in a house, a common house with uncommon characteristic. The home became
a space of dangerous. This representation of space is important to establish the fear and terror,
main features of gothic literature.
We can say that some elements are crucial to recognize a gothic story, for example
the space, which can be a castle, forest, a house; a prophecies that announce the bad fortune;
supernatural events.
In the next part of this paper, we will tried to identify these elements in the short story
The Black Cat by Allan Poe.
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The Black Cat: a Gothic Approach

The Black Cat is a story of a man who loved animal and he was fortunate to married
someone who shared the same passion for pets. Together they had all kind of animal in their
home, but the husband favorite animal was a cat, named Pluto. As time goes by, the man
starts to drink and mistreats the animals and his wife. At the beginning, Pluto was spared, but
the cat became also his victim and therefor the cat starts to avoid his owner. One night after
being drinking the main character take an eye of the cat. Nevertheless, the man starts hating
the cat more and more, because the animal avoids him, and one night he hang the cat in a tree,
killing him. In the same night, the fire consumed his house, leaving just a wall with an image
of a cat. A couple of days after, in a bar the man sees a cat that look just like Pluto, but with a
stain in his chess. Leaving the bar, the cat follows the man. This cat became part of the
family, however the next day, he notice that, as Pluto, this cat did not have one eye and starts
felling aversion for the animal. One day, the man and his wife were heading to the basement
and the cat also cause a falling of the man and with all the angry that he felt at the moment, he
took an axe and try to hit the cat with it, but instead he hits his wife in the head, killing her.
Now the main concern of the man is to hide the body of his wife. After considered many
option, he decided that he would wall the body in the basement and after this event; he never
sees the cat again. He began felling happy and relieved even with the police around his house.
The police had come many times to search the house, but without success, however in the
fourth time, that the police come to the house, the man compliment the wall and hit the same
wall where he has buried his wife with a stick and all the suddenly the police could hear a cat.
The police tarred the wall down and funded the body of the wife and the cat.
Edgar All Poe write stories in a concise, simple and popular way, he uses the
psychological terror. The first evidence of this is in the space where the story take place, in a
house, a home. This place is where we are supposed to be safe, where we find protection and
security, but in this case is the opposite of that.
This short story was written in 1843 and is narrated in the first person, like a
confession. The narrator and main character tries to blame the cat for all the events that are
described in the story. He portraits himself as a kind person and an animal lover, just as his
wife. All through the text, we can see that his intention is to responsibility the cat for the
murder. The reader does not know if the narrator had been always a bad person or if he
became like this over the years.
In the first case, the man had this felling with him and they became more evident
because of the drinking. There for the evil inside him was so big that he could kill his wife
and do not feel guilty about it. He even felt relived.
In the second case, considering that the narrator is a good man, the cat is the villain, a
supernatural cat. For those who embrace this theory, the cat is an evil animal and the narrator
is the only person that realized that. Because of this, he starts to act in an unusual way, killing
his wife, even after hanging the first cat. We can say that the came come back to torment him.
He sees the cat as evil, as a witch.
“In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which all black cats as
witches in disguise.” Poe
After this, the narrator keeps talking about his love to the cat, how his temper changes
without a reasonable reason. The man wants the reader to believe that he was possessed by
some kind of demon. Therefor he mistreated his wife, verbal and physically, and all the other
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pets and especially the cat. Here we can see one of the characteristics of gothic literature: the
violence, the perversity.
“I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, 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.” Poe
The interesting part here is that he cuts the cat’s eye, which is considered the mirror
of the soul. Beside seen the perversity of the cat, he probably saw his own. Maybe that is what
upset him about the cat. The cat eye can also be seem as the witness of the man violence. He
show some regret, but at the same time, he believes that he is out of guild. After this, the cat
demonstrated aversion thought the man and that pisses him more.
The name of the cat is Pulto, which can be related to the Greg God, the god of hell.
The name suggest something evil about the cat. Normally cat are animal loved by human, but
we tend to stay away from black cats. This could be the reason why, when he finds the second
cat, he believes that he is the reincarnation of the first cat.
We can also see perversity when he hang the cat. At this point, the narrative became
incoherent, because the narrator assumes that he kill the cat even knowing that the animal had
loved him. In the text, there is no details about the hanging. We do not know if someone had
saw him doing that, the narrator does not give much information about that event.
To prove the perversity, he also kills his wife, without felling remorse or showing any
regrets. His one and only concern is to hide the body. When he is done hiding the body, he
shows satisfaction with the fact. That proves that he had been always a bad person.
The supernatural is another characteristic of gothic literature. In the text is easily
found. For example, the allusion that the wife does about black cats being witches in disguise
may lead the reader to the conclusion that the cat was a witch, leaving in the cat’s body that
came to disturbed the man and his wife. Until this day, in many cultures, people still believe
that is bad luck if a black cat crosses your way.
The fire is another example of the supernatural in the text. It is mysterious and it
occurs in the same day that he hangs the cat in the tree. The narrator tell us that after the fire,
just a wall was left and that in this wall we could see the image of a big cat hang. The
explanation he gave us is also confused. We can assume that he was hallucinating, maybe
because of the guild. Or it could be understood is one of the many characteristic that Poe
gives to his characters. The fact that the image in the wall is big could be an exaggeration of
the narrator. We cannot prove is this story is true, since we have just the narrator point of
view.
After being drinking, the narrator came home with another cat. His wife liked the new
pet; however, the aversion that the narrator fell for this cat grows even more. He got to the
point of calling the cat a beast, thus he scarred him so much. We do not know why he felt this
way, maybe this cat remember him the first and all the atrocities he had done to that cat.
Especially after realized that to the second cat had just one eye like the first.
It is possible that the narrator felt threaten by the cat, by the same eye that saw his
evilness. The witch inside the cat had come back to haunt him and that is why he hate this cat
even more than the first. This can only be true if we considered that, the cat is the villain of
the story.
The suddenly appearance of the cat with his wife body can be considered as the
supernatural as well. This event challenge the character rationality. We do not know that in
the process of handing the body, the narrator puts the cat also in the wall and do not
remember or if the cat mysteriously got there. In this event, we can see another characteristic
of gothic literature: buried alive human or animals. That characteristic cannot be apply to the
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wife, since she was already dead, but if we thing that because of his madness he buried the cat
along with the body and did not notice.
In this short story, we can see a disturbed man in a normal world and not the other
way around. The reader can notice the narrator insanity, therefore cannot trust his version of
the story. Nevertheless, we have just his side of the story and the narrator tries to convince us
that anyone could do the same if facing a similar situation. As many of Poe’s narrator, this
one cannot be trusted. He wants the reader to be his accomplice. At the same time he tries to
foolish the reader, for the reason that every time that we thing that he is going to show regrets,
he shows relief.
The narrator give us motivation to suspect him since the beginning of the story. It is
too uncertain try to understand what is true or not in the story, since we have just the narrator
version. For example, if we assume that the image of the cat in the wall is a lied, then
everything else is also untruth. We do not have a way to prove it. The reader can decide that
the story is true by the sincerity that the narrator tells the story. However, this text should be
read with attention, as every detail revel something important to our interpretation.
By reading the sentences in which the narrator talks about their victims, we found
words like “patient”, “usual” or “without complains” that can reveal facts about the narrator’s
wife, of whom the narrator do not talk about that often. That can mean that the wife suffers as
much as the other animals. In this, we can see another characteristic of gothic: women in
distress. She does not have a voice in the text, a part from the things that the narrator said that
she said; she is almost invisible in the text.
The reader can assume one of two option: or the wife find in being silent and obedient
a way to deal with the narrator or the narrator is been sarcastic by talking about her in that
way and the true is that she is traumatized by him. Poe gives us two option: the narrator is
mad and the whole story is a lie, or is all true.
In Poe’s literary works, the houses are not describe with many details and in The
Black Cat, which is the case. The only aspect we have is from the cat in the wall after the fire.
This can mean that these events could had happen anywhere, in any home, any country. We
do know that the narrator lived in two houses; one before and another one after the fire. He
lost everything but that does not seem to upset him. We can imagine that he had good
financial resources, since the second house has a basement.
The title of the short story puts the attention in the cat, not the narrator. It also alludes
to just one cat and in the story there is two or maybe not. This story is open to many
interpretations, what can explain the success of Poe’s writing over one hundred years.
With a short title, it caught the reader’s attention, making them fell all kind of
contradictory emotions at all time. It is intriguing. The feelings are up to each reader, that is
the reason why the story means different things to different people.
Conclusion
Gothic literature is understood as an assemblage of elements when together form
what we can call a gothic literary work. Is not necessary for a poem, short story or novel had
all the elements to be considered gothic.
Among the many characteristic of gothic literature, we can find: perversity;
supernatural apparitions; suffering women; mysterious occurrences; setting in a remote past;
possessed characters. In this work, as said before, we can find some of this elements.
The main character, the narrator tells us his version of the story that had happen to
him, as if was a confession. He is in jail, therefor when he writes this; he is reliving the events
in his memory. Then he cannot be trust. The memory gap between the present and the past
help the writer to create this image of madness and lucidity. As we can see “ Yet, mad am I
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not- and very surely I not dream” Poe. The narrator’s ability to accrual relate events are
suspect.
He is a compact character in which the emphasis is the world inside him, his identity.
Nevertheless, this character has no name; the cat is the only character with a name. This detail
can help us support the second option; the narrator was a good man that became mad over the
years.
Allan Poe centers in his character, in his inside world. The text presents the reader a
man that suffers with the rapid changes of his time. A man that cannot understand what is
happening around him. It is a way of escape from reality, a way to believe that there is some
kind of explanation for the suffering, pain, fear, uncertainty that human can experience in
lifetime.
One of the feature of Gothic stories is that the focus is not on hero, but in the villain.
This aspect is an innovation of gothic literature.
Considering that gothic emerge as a reaction to the rationality of the 18thcentrury, we
can say that gothic literature aim to question if the complexity of human beans can be
explained just trough rationality and reason. The imagination is the field of gothic writers,
who inquiry the objectivity.

References.

Pang, W. F., Wang, D. Q., & Hu, S. S. (2015). Gothicism in The Fall of the House of Usher.
Advances in Literary Study, 3, 15-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/als.2015.31003

Poe, Edgar Allan. (2014) The black Cat. Ibilio ebooks.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Black_Cat.pdf

Lovecraft, H.P (1973): Supernatural Horror in Literature, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-

gothic-poetry.htm

Punter, David (1996) The literature of Terror: The Gothic Tradition.

http://www.edtl.com.pt/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=viewlink&link_id=926&Itemid