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Alcoholism and Domestic Violence
“The Black Cat” can be read as a temperance tale, a story that warns of the disastrous effect alcohol can have on a person’s life and the happiness of their household. The story explores how alcoholism causes the narrator to behave like the tyrant of his household, caring only for his own needs and emotions. The narrator’s emphasis on his previous sensitivity and the happiness of their home emphasizes the stark contrast once alcoholism takes hold. At the beginning of the story, he mentions all the pets he and his wife had together, and even includes his wife’s voice in sharing her joke about Pluto being a witch’s cat. Once he describes his descent into alcoholism, all these characters fade into the background, becoming mere objects of his anger. The narrator’s increasing violence, now targeted toward Pluto, fills the entire story, as if the other members of his household have ceased to matter. This focus on the narrator’s rage creates a claustrophobic effect, as if the story doesn’t have room to address the other characters’ feelings directly, which mirrors the likely atmosphere inside the narrator’s household as his rages become the norm.
The Self and the Alter Ego
Like many of Poe’s short stories, “The Black Cat” explores the idea of a dual personality, a self and alter-ego in one body. The narrator himself describes his transformation as a disintegration of his soul. When he notes feeling guilty after cutting out Pluto’s eye, he describes it as still having “much of my old heart left,” as if he’s slowly becoming another person. However, the contradiction between the narrator’s two selves is not so distinct. The narrator maintains his sensitivity in his transformation, but instead of being sensitive toward the feelings of others, all his sensitivity focuses on himself. Therefore, when he thinks Pluto might be avoiding him, he cannot handle the specter of rejection from his favorite pet. He later states that he murders Pluto because Pluto loved him. It seems that the narrator is unable to face the emotional fallout of his actions, and therefore must destroy what he loves. Whereas previously his sensitivity made him tender-hearted, now it makes him “irritable” prone to lashing out. In this sense, the narrator’s self already contains seeds of his alter ego. Alcohol may be the catalyst but the potential has always been there.
The Danger of Repressing Guilt
The escalating violence in “The Black Cat” can be at least partially traced to the narrator’s repressed guilt. The narrator at first feels sad and remorseful for cutting out Pluto’s eye when he sees Pluto avoids him. However, when the feelings of rejection overwhelm his guilt, he decides to murder Pluto. When he acknowledges that he misses Pluto and regrets murdering him, he brings home the second black cat. However, the similarities of this new cat to Pluto make him feel even more guilty. The gallows spot on its chest, whether real or imagined, further reminds the narrator of how he treated his beloved pet. The narrator’s inability to face or process his guilt leads him to attempt to murder the cat, and ultimately murder his wife for stopping him. Surprisingly, the narrator insists he feels no remorse after his wife’s murder, citing that he is able to sleep. Nevertheless, when offering the police a tour of the house, he focuses on the very spot he hid her body, banging on it and bringing about his own downfall. Like in several of Poe’s stories, the narrator’s sense of guilt and remorse can only be buried, but never erased. It will always rise to the surface.
