Perverseness Within the Black Cat Tale by Edgar Allan Poe

Perverseness Within The Black Cat tale by Edgar Allan Poe

Introduction

Bearing in mind Poe’s Short Story Theory, a tale must be short enough to create a single emotional effect. Regarding this, it is possible to find in The Black Cat tale, along with mystery elements, some other elements which lead the reader to reflect about the narrator and his actions, through his explanations and justifications about the sequence of events.

The emotional effect Poe seems to wish to achieve, in The Black Cat, is the sense of human perverseness. Be perverse means showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable. Contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice (Oxford Dictionaries). Taking that into account, while I was reading about perverseness — and also regarding the evidences of it in the tale —, I was able to apply a philosophical and psychological perspective to my research through the knowledge I have gained in previous courses, which facilitated and affected the way I understood the concept and analysed the narrator’s action.

Therefore, I thought important to analyse perverseness because it illustrates the human inner nature — which is cruel — as well as the capacity of human mind to be aware of and struggle against it, in order to be able to reverse our barbarous nature, by first resisting that cruelty, and secondly trying to be tolerant and compassionate (Morin 200) — although it does not happen with the tale’s narrator.

Literary Review

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer who, despite of his brief and tragic life, had an important role in the American literature and also in the world literature, mainly concerning his mystery and horror tales as well as his poetries. He was responsible to enhance the short story genre and was the pioneer in exploring detective fiction — which foreshadows horror, fantasy and science fiction genre that are so popular today (Vanspanckeren 42). Most of his masterpieces presents a dark vision combined with elements of reality, which seems to be a result of his life experiences’ influence.

Poe was orphaned in his early age and was raised by a rich southern merchant, who never legally adopted him, but tried to give him a good home and the opportunity of a good education. He married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1835, when she was fourteen years old — although this kind of marriage was common in that time, it was considered an attempt to find the family stability he did not have. Beside this, they seemed to have a successful marriage, since most of his poems resemble to be written in tribute to her. In 1842 she contracted tuberculosis and had been gradually worsening for five years until she died — two years after the publishment of The Raven.

It is worth mentioning that we cannot deny Poe had a difficult life, taking into consideration the disease of his wife and other facts which seemed to had influenced in the creation of his masterpieces’ dark side. However, in spite of the magnitude of his contribution to the existing literature, many biographers have been focused only on his personal life, unfairly claiming that he was a manic depressive and an alcoholic. As a result, Poe's great genius was overlooked for a long time. Therefore, it is not our place to judge what kind of man Poe was, but through his writings and the facts of his life available to us, we can — fairly and free of bias — evaluate how delighted he was, regarding the magnitude of his creativity and authenticity.

Regarding Poe’s masterpiece called The Black Cat, it has been described as a tale of horror, which approaches the narrator’s psychotic personality, revealing Poe’s fascination about the human mind. By means of the sense of perverseness, Poe explores the exotic and strange aspect of psychological processes. In the beginning of the tale the narrator, prior to his the atrocities, was considered a normal/common man, but in some moments of the tale he seems to lose his sanity. Furthermore, throughout the tale, its narrator tries to explain and justify his irrational and compulsive acts — he committed violence against animals and also against his wife, cut out one of the eyes of his favourite cat and killed it, killed his wife and wall her and another cat up. Consequently, the elaborate explanations and painful manner, approached in the tale, leaves the reader baffled with such cruelty. Those cruel acts perpetrated by the narrator are emphasized in order to allow the reader to reflect and examine about his bizarre mental state.

Poe seems to assume that any man, at a given moment, is capable of really anything and can commit irrational and horrible imaginable acts. Thus, this tale deals with subconscious mental activities which cause a person who leads a so-called normal existence to suddenly change and perform drastic, horrible deeds. Poe was concerned with the conditions and the various stages which lead a person to commit acts of madness, particularly when that madness manifests itself in an otherwise normal person (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, About).

Therefore, the tale attempts to present the interior disintegration of the narrator as well as the capacity of the human mind to deceive itself and the incapacity of it in preventing its own destruction.

Discussion

First of all, it is worth considering that the perverseness analysed in the narrator’s actions — also mentioned by himself — in the tale relates to what Morin says about human barbarism, which is inner to our nature, located in our hearts. Additionally, one contribution Freud gave to understanding basic instincts was the idea that two opposite forces, the sexual one (life instinct, that refers in general to physical satisfaction) and the aggressive one (death instinct, that refers to destruction) — which are basic, biological, continuous and unresolved instinctive conflicts we as humans deal with. Therefore, we must resist the cruelty in the world, by first resisting that barbarism — refusing the subjective cruelty which consists of desiring to do wrong, suffering and torture —, secondly trying to be tolerant and compassionate — lift the spirit, the consciousness, diminish the unconsciousness and the ignorance which are responsible to produce bad things, as well as face the conditions which brings out the subjective cruelty (Morin 200-202; Fadiman & Frager 9).

Bearing this in mind, The Black Cat portrays the human mind’s capacity to observe its own deterioration,