The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe Summary

The book tells the story of a man who realizes that his mental state is deteriorating and accepts that he needs to do something before his life is too late. The story revolves around the sense of guilt that surrounds a murderer who commits a crime and who is capable of hiding his crime. But the feeling of guilt takes him to the edge of madness and to reveal himself against himself.

At the beginning of the story, the man lived happily with his pet cat and wife. Life seemed to go on smoothly apart from minor incidences that happened. However, things begun changing when the man started taking alcohol. The unnamed man says that he started by getting easily irritated even when around close friends. The man started by being verbally abusive towards his wife every time they would have an argument. However, this did not last long and he started abusing his wife physically.

It was not only his wife who was subjected to violence, according to the narrative, but also his beloved cat. The man loved the cat very much and spent most of the time petting him. He began his violence towards animals by hanging his first cat, Pluto, after returning home drunk. Shortly after, another cat came to live with him, also mistreats him. The theme of violence in history reaches its climax when the narrator kills his wife, a point worth mentioning is that the man blames his violent act of alcoholism.

When he was not drunk, he was a kind and gentle person who treated people and animals with tenderness. However, it is worth noting that towards the end of the story, the man no longer blames his violent acts of alcohol, but blames a supernatural power that caught him every time he was drunk. It was not only his wife and cats who experienced the violence of man but also other animals.

Before the man started drinking, he was loyal to his wife and pet cat, Pluto. However, the man gets out his cat eyes out. Despite the fact that his wife saw the kind of cruelty to which he had subjected the cat, he still remained faithful to him.

After the man took out the cat eye, the cat was still playing with him. Under normal circumstances, the cat would have run away from the house and moved to another house away from the brutality.

When the man discovered that the cat also lacks an eye, begins to despise him, while the woman loves him even more. After a while, the woman shows the man that the white spot on the cat skin has grown. Interestingly, the white spot now forms an image of the gallows .The gallows a wooden device used to hang people.

The man is too afraid of the cat to abuse him, but the cat never leaves him alone for a moment, and even sits on his chest and breathes in his face when he is in bed. Then, man does not sleep. As his hatred for the cat increases, so does his physical and verbal abuse of his wife. One day, he and his wife go down to the basement of the old house where they live now that they are poor. The cat follows them. In an attack of extreme irritation, the man tries to kill the cat with an ax. The woman stops him and the man; sticks the ax in his brain, killing her.

Man wonders how it is better to hide the body. After much deliberation, the man decides to hide the body in a space behind the basement wall. That night, the man sleeps peacefully for the first time in a long time. The cat is nowhere to be found.

The police appear. On the fourth day, there is still no woman and cat. But, the police come back and search the house again, especially in the warehouse. Just when they are about to leave, abandoning their search in the cellar, the man decides to brag about how well built the house is. He takes his cane and hits it against the place on the wall where his wife body is hidden.

A noise responds to his blow. It’s a sad sound, like a crying child. It sounds horrible and desperate, but also victorious. The police are in that. They go down the wall only to find the body, with the cat on top of the head. And that is why the man is in jail, sentenced to death by hanging him. The narrator had accidentally closed the cat on the wall with the body.