In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat," the narrator guides us through an ever tightening progression of scenes that are "nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects" (137). Poe uses this approach to setting to build focus and tension in the story. Through a first-person narrative and ever confining physical spaces, Poe shows the inner workings of a man mutating from being docile, soft hearted and kind, to a remorseless beast. Because of the narrator's focus on just this, we do not get vivid descriptions of the scenery around the characters. Rather, as Poe's story progresses, the world of "The Black Cat" closes in, decreasing in size from home, to basement, to cell and tomb.
"The Black Cat" begins with an unreliable tirade by the narrator, who has been condemned to die by hanging the next day, telling us to believe "this is a series of mere household events" [Poe04]. Initially the man lived a varied and domesticated life, in a two story home, filled with the love of his wife, his animals and a "sagacious" cat, Pluto. This initial setting seems one replete with joy, a loving wife and a menagerie of fine animals; a broad world surrounds this limited cast of characters. In the narrator's childhood, he reveals that he was "noted for the docility and humanity of [his] my disposition" (138). We envision the life that the narrator describes, the streets that they wander and the decent home they dwell in. In his free state the narrator is kind and sane. This all changes with the introduction of a cat, "large and beautiful, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree" [Poe04]. This cat Pluto (the name comes from the Roman god of the dead), is loving, clingy and somewhat mysterious. During this time the narrator falls victim to the "Fiend Intemperance" and "day by day, [the] more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others" (138).