Mahnoor Saqib 

FIQWS 10008

Professor Alyssa 

31 October 2019

Scary Events

“The Black Cat” was written by Edgar Allan Poe and was published in 1864. The story shows the dread of the narrator and it is full of terrifying events that will probably make the reader scared. The narrator does not have a name, did many horrific actions and because of those actions, he suffered a lot in his. In Poe’s story, “The Black Cat”, the narrator displaces his anger from the repressed memory of being teased on to the cat, which leads to the narrator to become an alcoholic and kill his cat and wife. 

At the beginning of the story, “The Black Cat”, the narrator describes his childhood experiences of being teased by other people on his personality. Since he did not have any friends with whom he could share his emotions so he spent most of the time with his animals and shared his feelings with them especially with Pluto, his favorite animal. “My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my championship. I was especially fond of animals and was indulged by parents with a great variety of pets” (Poe n.pag.). This shows that in the narrator’s infancy people used to make jokes about him and he repressed this memory, which later affected his life. According to Freud, repression occurs when a thought is too painful, so the person unconsciously pushes the information out of conscious and become unaware of its existence (2212). When Pluto avoided the narrator’s presence he became angry and pulled out one of pluto’s eyes an0d then killed him. As a result, the narrator’s repressed memory activated and reminded him of his painful childhood, when people did not want him to be their friend and he was alone.

Even though the narrator did some horrible things to Pluto, he feels guilty and understands the crime he committed. Later, he saw another cat who looks like Pluto, so in his pluto’s love, he brought that cat home. He started falling into the same pattern of anger and hatred, but he did not want to kill that cat too because he sees Pluto in that cat. “I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it” (Poe n. pag.). Whenever the thoughts of Pluto or the other cat annoyance him, he just drinks alcohol and repressed his thoughts and works on his wishful impulse. The crime he committed, killing Pluto because of the activation of his repressed memory leads him to his wishful impulse of not losing the other cat. Freud claims, “a wishful impulse which was in sharp contrast to the subject’s other wishes and which proved incompatible with the ethical and aesthetic standards of his personality” (2212). Since he was very close to Pluto, he spent most of his time with Pluto than his wife, so losing him was very disturbing for him. Sometimes the narrator feels that Pluto is with him which makes him feel better but originally it is the other black cat.

Furthermore, Instead of dealing with his temperament, he decided to displace it on his animals and his wife. “It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself — to offer violence to its own nature — to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only — that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute” (Poe n. pag.). The narrator’s personality gradually changes negatively and he starts to kill his loved ones. He mistreats his animals to show his power and authority, as they are innocent and will not fight back. According to Freud, displacement is a shift in your emotional desires. (2223). The reason behind the displacement in the narrator’s behavior could be the repressed memory of his childhood when he did not have friends and people were used to make jokes on him. At that time, he was a child and not have enough power to compete with those people so he did not say anything to them and isolated himself in his home with his animals. Where he tortured his animals, on the other hand, he also violated his wife.

In “The Black Cat”, the narrator’s actions are very terrifying, the story is full of horrific events which include anger, hatred, torture, and killing. The narrator’s anger displaces on to his loved ones from repressing the memory of being a joke by the people. Consequently, he became an alcoholic which changed his behavior from an animal lover to an abuser to his animals and wife. He tortures his animals, he killed Pluto and his wife.

Works Cited 

Giordano, Robert. “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe.” PoeStories.com, http://poestories.com/read/blackcat

Freud, Sigmund. “Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis.” 1910. https://archive.org/stream/SigmundFreud/Sigmund%20Freud%20%5B1909%5D%20Five%20Lectures%20on%20PsychAanalysis%20%28James%20Strachey%20translation%2C%201955%29#page/n3/mode/2up