Essays on The Black Cat

The theme of the Black Cat is “Your actions can’t change you but the way you treat others will make an impact”. Edgar thought that if he drank he could change the way that other people look at him, he always felt like he had...

When you are trying to find treasure, you follow the map. When you read a story, you listen to the narrator. Once you get to the final destination, you might not find treasure, a disappointment which would mean that you had a deceptive map. Similarly,...

In the tradition story-telling, few concepts are as popular as supernatural intervention into human life. These interventions typically feature a very familiar, nearly house-hold collection of descriptive forms: angels, demons, invisible kinetic forces, and even nature itself are all used as representations of divinity, and...

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic who was best known for his poetry and short stories which was mainly his take on mystery and horror. Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts and was the second child...

Introduction As described by many critics and literary writers, Edgar Allan Poe is, without a doubt, one of the most influential writers, critics, poets and editors in America history and well-known in the world of literature. With his ‘Gothic’ style in writings, as many of...

Irrational behavior is often met with confusion, though one never fully understands the reasoning behind it. It intrigues creators and scientists who depict and study these lapses of judgement as it often happens unwittingly. As such, Edgar Allan Poe explores this phenomenon of the unconscious...

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe is a morbid story about the change the narrator undergoes and the gruesome and disturbing nature of his behaviors. Through the narrator’s development in the story, his behavior can be investigated by using an aspect Sigmund Freud’s theory...

Overwhelming obsession and guilt often lead to deadly consequences. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” Edgar Allan Poe presents us with two men who each commit brutal murders motivated by overwhelming obsession. The narrators differ in their dispositions but fall victim to the...

Traditional Gothic characteristics were originally exemplified by Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto. This text was the first novel of its kind to introduce, a suspenseful atmosphere, ancient prophecies, and metonymy of horror. Novels and stories frequently revisit the same elements when creating a gothic tale,...

In modern society, “corruption” connotes financial bribery, dishonest proceedings, or underhanded deals in business or politics. The perpetrators might waste others’ money and will supposedly suffer emotionally, but Romantic literature points out the more dangerous effects of internal corruption. For example, “The Black Cat” by...

Depicted in the acclaimed short story “The Black Cat” (1843) by master of macabre, Edgar Allan Poe and “The Cat From Hell” (1977) by contemporary horror brilliance, Stephen King is a composition of suspense strategies, which engenders fear and curiosity that allows authors to manipulate...

Freud described personality by dividing it into three main subjects; personality structure which is the id, ego, and superego, personality dynamics in particular the self-defence mechanism and personality development. Today I will be focusing only on the personality structure and the personality dynamics. This analysis...

Is the desire to do evil part of human nature, or does this desire stem from somewhere else? In the short story “The Black Cat” (1843), Edgar Allan Poe illustrates the difficulties that the narrator is experiencing through his personal perspective, which portrays him as...

For two stories of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe and Miriam by Truman Capote, both protagonists are influenced by their powerful thoughts and mental issues, which cause by different objects from the outward world and the inner struggles. In the first case, the...

In David Foster Wallace’s paper ‘Consider the Lobster’, Wallace argues that animals suffering is a complex question. Although some may disagree with Wallace’s view that because lobsters are not human, cooking a living lobster cannot be considered a moral decision, this idea is wrong and...

The extract from the novel Nervous Conditions provided for this essay is revelatory of how heaven fell down upon earth for Tambu as she was making the transition from village life to a mission school. Climbing onto Babamukuru’s car with the knowledge that she was...

Nervous Conditions and Coconut are two novels which intrinsically showcase the challenges that arise after colonisation. The exploration of the complex position that African women face in the light of the detrimental effects of colonisation and its influence as it assimilates with traditional structures. The...