Edgar Allan Poe and the Black Cat

            Edgar Allan Poe victoriously achieved the goal of creating the image of complete and utter insanity in his dark, twisted tale "The Black Cat. " Poe's first person narrative quickly establishes ambiguity about the story and the preceding events the narrator described. The narrator is the main character in this story, he is the center, the focus. We do not learn about him firsthand, rather, we learn about him by what he has penned to us. We receive the details that happened from a nostalgic flashback that he has written on paper before his death. He experiences a deterioration from normality to delirium. Throughout this narrative, the narrator's character changes in attribute due to his vulnerability to alcohol which drives his perverseness, his behavior towards his animals, and his masked guilt from murdering his wife. .
             Hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, constitute the chief furniture of his apartment which is presented to shine light on his alcoholism and is the direct causation to why he cannot rid himself of his perverse desires. "The spirit of Perverseness (521). " This spirit is the utmost captivating affair of the story, it is what enables these written accounts to happen in the first place. The narrator contemplates this perverse feeling as one of "the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man to violate that which is Law (521) ." The narrator also affirms the "unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself (521)."His "disease (520) "compels him to .
             lynch his cat, Pluto, from the nearby tree and he does so as there are "tears streaming from [his] eyes and with the bitterest remorse at [his] heart(521) " Pluto has not been disorienting nor has he misbehaved in any manner; however, the narrator still cannot hinder his strong desire to commit such immoral action. His brash and perverse impulse has far exceeded the dominion of behaviorism and entered the empire of possession of this dark spirit of perverseness, of the metaphysical, when in actuality it is his alcohol, his disease is that what is pushing him over the edge.