In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," the narrator goes through a dramatic change in the story. He is depicted as an affectionate person who is driven into madness. The narrator is first described as a gentle, loving man who would never hurt a fly. He illustrates his warm heartedness by saying "My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions." (DiYanni 131) He was especially fond of animals and nothing made him happier than feeding and cuddling with them. He has a pet cat, Pluto, which he loves dearly. After few years, the narrator develops a drinking problem, he becomes irritable and violent not only to people, but also to his pets. Late one night after drinking excessively at the bar, he arrives home and grabs Pluto, which startles the cat causing it to react by biting the man's hand. The narrator was enraged by the cat's reaction that he pulls out his penknife and cuts the cat's eye out. Over the next few days, he realizes he could not bear to look at the one-eyed monster he had created, so he decides to go ahead and hang Pluto. Later on that week, the narrator starts to feel very remorseful over what he has done and misses his cat very much. One night, at the bar, he finds a cat extremely similar to Pluto and decides to take it home. Before he knows it, he quickly starts to grow loving emotions for the cat. Over time, the missing eye of the new cat starts to drive the man crazy because he does not want to remember what he did to Pluto. One night he is no longer able to deal with his own thoughts and feelings, and decides to go down stairs and gets an axe to slaughter the cat. His wife sees what is going on and tries to stop him. This only infuriates the man even further, and he drives the axe into his wife's head. These actions of the narrator shows the altitude of his alcoholic rage and it lead him to go from a calm tender guy to a vicious brutal beast.
