Black Cat Madness

The human mind is capable of undergoing a complete change of personality and behavior at any time. This sudden change can cause said mind to fall into a state of madness. No one can ever be sure if what a madman is telling them is true, whether they are truly insane, hallucinatory, lying, or deliberately contracting a defense of homicidal mania for himself. Through "The Black Cat", Edgar Allan Poe presents the ability of the human mind to recognize its wrongful acts and the deterioration of the mind's capacity to identify without being able to prevent its decline. The unnamed narrator states that he knows what he does is wrong, yet his actions and his thoughts throughout the story portray otherwise. It is made clear from the beginning …show more content…
He "blushes to confess" (60) the effect that alcohol has on him, yet does nothing to change, as he continually "plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of [his deeds]". As his cat continued to avoid the narrator out of fear, the spirit of perverseness overcame him. Though he can hardly bring himself to write what he had done, he again contradicts himself, describing how he killed his favorite cat Pluto in cold blood simply for avoiding him. He "hung it with tears stamping from [his] eyes" (61), showing that the man knows that what he is doing is wrong and feels ashamed. However, despite knowing that there was no reason to do so, he continued simply because killing something that once loved him so deeply was the wrong thing to do. This act of perversity is the beginning of several such acts which will characterize the mans downfall. That night, after the cruel deed was executed, his house burned to the ground, and the man sees nothing particularly wrong with the catastrophe. He refuses to see this as perhaps retribution for murdering his cat, being a man that rejects anything so superstitious. The narrator does not take responsibility for his own actions, but rather blames the fiend intemperance and his perverseness for his …show more content…
Though it had been reported repeatedly that the narrator had dearly loved his wife, this sudden gruesome act is done without thinking or mourning. Any guilt that the narrator feels for these actions is fleeting, "a feeble and equivocal feeling, and [his] soul remains untouched" (60). The man seems to be almost proud of the idea that hanging Pluto was a sin "beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God" (61). There were no longer any traces of his old docile self, showing no remorse of the death of his wife, only concern about how he should conceal her body. It is this pride that leads to his downfall, as the incomprehensible act of him rapping on the wall that concealed his wife before the police was driven by the "glee at [his] heart [that] was too strong to contain" (65). Evidently, the madness that the man had so passionately denied at the beginning of the story is what gets him caught in the