The Black Cat: Questions

1. Look up any words that you don’t understand.

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen.."

Homely: 1. Simple but cozy and comfortable; 2. Unattractive in appearance (used of a person; didn't know this definition of the word!)

But given the definition and context, I still don't fully understand the usage of the word "homey". It can't refer to the second definition, unless Poe is using personification... even then, I find it a pretty unconventional choice. It doesn't really add up with the first definition either, since the story is neither simple nor comfortable. So I still don't really understand this in context -- anyone that can shed light, please do! :)

2. In the first two paragraphs, the narrator tells us who he is. Contrast those paragraphs to this statement. What has changed?

The narrator has clearly had a change of disposition since the beginning of the story, when "docility and humanity" were his primary traits. He seems more interested in the subversion of human nature (or some can argue in fully indulging the darker side of his humanity).


3. Write a list of several themes in this story.
Guilt; violence (intent, motive, psychological effects); humans' primal darkness


4. Find a textual excerpt that exemplifies one of these themes, and write a paragraph that contains a block quote.

In "The Black Cat" Edgar Allan Poe seems consumed by a need to understand our inherent darkness within the context of human nature. He seems to rationalize this innate darkness by emphasizing the enormous juxtaposition of his narrator's original disposition against its eventual atrophy. This is made most clear in the narrator's explanation for killing the cat:

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart--one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?

Poe seems to imply that darkness, or "perverseness", is an inherent part of humanity. The narrator's repression of his inner darkness makes its emergence more alarming. Poe would have been very much aware of the effect of this gentle narrator's change of heart, and has played to the reader's revulsion. In a sense, he seems to feel that the reader can empathize -- which he shows by having the narrator address the reader directly, making the reader a part of the narrator's perversion -- which serves to further repulse the reader. I find it interesting that we read Edgar Allan Poe with such morbid fascination; it makes me believe that to some extent, the reader feels for the narrator's darkness.