I think that in the short story, “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, that the narrator of the story is telling this story for a few different reasons. One reason is a confessional and another as a defense for his inhumane actions against his animals, mainly his cat, as well as his wife.
There is ample evidence of this story as being a confession by the narrator. The first of which is in the opening lines of the story. He says that his purpose for writing this story is to “Unburthen my soul” and that what happened has “terrified”, “tortured” and destroyed” him (Poe, 230). That right there indicates to me that what he has done is something which is very wrong and disturbing and that this will be turning into a confession story on his part. The narrator goes on to describe that he loved his cat Pluto, who was a big, black cat which was very keen and wise. He first describes how he removes an eye from Pluto one night while in a drunken stupor. The next morning after remembering the deed he “drowned in wine all memory of the deed” (Poe, 232). The narrator would eventually go on to hang the cat.
As the story is unfolding there are a few questions as to whether this is actually a confession. It very well could be a defense to his terrible actions toward his cat and eventually his wife. One defense that I think that is being employed is that the alcohol drove him into the act of murdering his cat, Pluto. As the new cat returns as nearly the same cat as it was before, the narrator soon beings to loath the cat again solely based on the “remembrance of my former deed of cruelty” (Poe, 234). Not only does he hate the new cat he is seeing the “phantasm” of the cat which went on for months (Poe, 233). Along with the mental images that keep reoccurring for the narrator of the murdered cat, he believes that the cat had to do with some sort of haunting that had occurred with the burning down of his house. Finally, when down in the cellar with the cat and almost falling down stairs by the “evil” cat, he decides that he has had enough. He goes to kill the cat when his wife intervenes and stops the murder. He would kill his wife instead and bury her in the wall of the cellar. I think that the story turned into a defense of his actions dealing with the cat as well as his alcohol disease. I think that he was so convinced within his own mind that the cats were there to mentally destroy him for his actions of murder.
As he buries his dead wife in the wall of the cellar and is unable to find that cat anywhere he is supremely relieved. He had a “deep, blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature” (Poe, 237). He would then go to sleep that night, and for the first time since the new cat had entered the house, he slept tranquilly (Poe, 237). In my opinion he is trying to use this as a defense to insanity. No, I do not think that he was clinically insane, but I believe that he has described this story as to prove that though he murdered his wife, the “monster” cat was involved and drove him to the unthinkable crime. He even goes on to state in the final paragraph of the story when describing the discovery of his wife’s body and the cat that the “hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder” was staring at him (Poe, 238).
Do I think that the narrator is confessing to the murder of his wife in this short story? Yes, of course I do. But I think that in this story the man is also trying to implicate the cat for the wrong doing as well. The way he describes that cat through out the story as well as how it haunted him into exhaustion and lack of sleep, and his visions of the cat which he continually saw is an indication to me that the cat led him to this and was able to mentally disturb him. Along with his plea that he was driven to this murder by the demon cat, I think that there is some remorse from him, but it does not outweigh the burden the was relieved by the disappearance of the cat as he says that the cat had “fled the premises forever!” and the “guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little” (Poe, 237).
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