The Black Cat: A Linguistic Analysis

Introduction

The literary genre known as Gothic actually evolved as a subcategory of Romantic literature giving the authors of that period the ability to write about darkness, terrifying events, haunted castles, ghosts, and death. Gothic soon became associated with blood-curdling screams, moans, graveyards and anything else that appeared macabre or mysterious. It first appeared as a form of architecture or landscaping, but in 1764, Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, the first of the ‘gothic literary genre’ complete with haunted castles, death, damsels in distress, moans, screams, and strange obsessions which resurrected the emotions of fear and wonder among the readership. By 1790, such novels were flooding the markets and theaters were exploring different ways to depict the dark mystery and foreboding atmosphere of Gothic literature on stage. Edgar Allan Poe was and still is one of the premier writers of the Gothic genre. His ability to build a suspenseful atmosphere as well as to probe the mysteries of the human mind continues to draw readers 163 years after his death. Many commentators objected to the Gothic genre based on “how plot-driven” as well as how “cheaply they solved their mysteries” but there was no denying their ability to influence crowds and manipulate society with their “suspense and trickery” (Lynch & Stillinger, 2006). The psychological richness of Poe’s works as well as the terror factor have kept readers coming back again and again making Poe one of the most widely read of the Gothic authors.

Born in Philadelphia in 1809, Poe was orphaned at the age of three and adopted by a family in Richmond, Virginia. He spent a brief period in England during his childhood and after brief stints at university and in the army, Poe returned to the United States, making stops in Boston, New York, and Baltimore before settling once more in Philadelphia. It has been said that Poe’s works are a reflection of the author himself and that could very well be true. The Philadelphia of Poe’s time is one that historians have tried to hide more than a century and don’t often talk about. “Philadelphia was a city of corruption, race riots, labor riots, violence and blood-shed so prevalent that the period from 1815-1860 is considered historically to be the city’s most violent. The urban sprawl of the 19th century was filled with death and violence, criminal activity choked the streets, murders went unsolved, grave robbers patrolled graveyards and prisons dominated the scenery in certain neighborhoods” (Pettit, 2007). Race riots were a daily occurrence between the African-American community and the Irish immigrant population, no organized police force existed yet, and the fire department spent more time fighting amongst themselves while building burned to the ground. Poe was a daily witness to this violence and bloodshed and it surely must have influenced his creative genius. Before Philadelphia, Poe’s works portrayed a more European-style of Gothicism, but the majority of Poe’s best known works were created during his time in ‘the City of Brotherly Love’. Some of Poe’s works, such as The Man in the Crowd, are set in London, England, but “the imagery used to describe the city is a template of Philadelphia with its labyrinthine streets, and gas-lit scenes of squalor and decay” (Pettit, 2007) points clearly to Philadelphia’s social mayhem influencing many of Poe’s works. Following a move from Philadelphia to New York, Poe’s wife died in 1842, triggering periods of drunkenness, erratic behavior, and poverty which dimished his creative output and contributed to his death in Baltimore on October 3, 1849.

Many literary elements go into the making of a classic Gothic novel including castles, dungeons, underground passages, witchcraft, grave-robbing, monsters, vampires, werewolves, gargoyles, certain forms of architecture such as flying buttresses and towers, candles, darkness, moans and screams as well as passionate villain or anti-hero. In The Black Cat (1845), the reader initially notices the more ornate forms of language used by Poe giving the text an archaic feel. For example: “Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not – and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul” (Poe, 1845), in today’s language would sound more like this: I would be mad indeed to expect belief when even my own senses deny the evidence. Yet, I am not mad – nor do I dream. But tomorrow I die, so today I must unburden my soul – confess my sins. The archaic formula of Poe’s English harkens back to the writing styles of the 18th century and before, possibly influenced by his familiarity with the works of Samuel Coleridge and Shakespeare. Coleridge’s works were studied at length by Poe as evidenced by his eulogy to Coleridge in an early volume of his poetry as well as “the literary techniques Poe used to humanize the bird in The Raven” (Atlantic, 1896). Writers in the 18th century wrote the way they spoke with no hard and fast rules about sentence structure or how words were to be used. During the 19th century, the English language underwent a period of restructuring which resulted in many commentaries on the proposed changes as well as new rules for word usage, punctuation and phrasing.

         Other elements that are evident in The Black Cat include the narrator’s confusion over his impending death. He describes the story as a series of “mere household events, a phantasm that has terrified, tortured and destroyed him” resulting in an “ordinary succession of natural causes and effects” (Poe, 1845) effectively removing all blame for what took place from himself. By his choice of words, Poe reveals the narrator’s limited comprehension of his state of mind as well as a life style that proves the narrator’s inadequacy. The Gothic genre contains a vocabulary all its own including words such as diabolical, infernal, haunted, afflicted, affliction, fright, terror, shrieks, moans, sobs, provoked, rage, incense, fury, demoniacal, demon and many more. In The Black Cat, the narrator blames the “Fiend Intemperance” (drunkenness) for his change in mood. Other gothic words or phrases used by Poe such as “I seized him; when in his fright…”; “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me…”; “fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured…”; and “spirit of Perverseness” can be found throughout the story. In keeping with the Gothic style, the cat is named Pluto, a reference to the Roman God of the Dead, and is all black. The narrator notes that his wife, having a somewhat superstitious nature, believes the cat is a witch – a belief that the narrator doesn’t take seriously. The narrator, in a drunken rage, cuts one of the cat’s eyes from its socket, an act which causes him to “burn, to blush, and to shudder as he pens the damnable atrocity”, then after some time has passed he “slips a noose over the cat’s head and hangs it in the garden” (Poe, 1845). This image of has been interpreted in more recent times as a slave (cat) being hung in the pre-Civil War south of Poe’s youth. Some critics have condemned Poe’s writings, especially The Black Cat, for the domestic abuse and violence against animals which occurs in the story. The narrator’s actions are open to such interpretation and include acts of domestic violence or animal abuse. However, they are also critical statements of social ills that plagued the Victorian society of Poe’s day. The narrator regards his actions as “cold-blooded” but necessary “because [he] knew that it was wrong, knew that the cat loved him, and that he was committing a sin that would put his immortal soul beyond the reach of even a God of infinite mercy” (Poe, 1845). These are the mental justifications of a deranged mind fully evident in the shocking attack on the cat and its ‘murder’. A fire burns his house down the night after he kills the cat and in the morning, his guilt-ridden mind imagines a bas-relief image of a cat with a noose around his neck burned into the one remaining wall where the head of his bed used to be. Poe uses the words “apparition, terror, and wonder” to describe the narrator’s reaction to the betraying image. The supernatural appearance of the cat-like image on the wall continues the gothic theme of terror and suspense. The narrator’s justification for Pluto’s murder has also been interpreted as justification for the hanging of a much loved, faithful slave “for no other reason than to do so – no offence has been given” – and would certainly add weight to the narrator’s belief that his immortal soul might be at risk – beyond even God’s infinite mercy. Such an interpretation reveals how Poe’s style of writing, in particular the Gothic style found in many of his works, produces narrators who are only “quasi-animate” – forever in danger of settling into a state of death-like morbidity – becoming more slave-like through their inability to ‘live life” (Coviello, 2003). The narrator’s inability to ‘live his life’ is evident in the spiral of drunkenness, physical abuse and murder that ends with him awaiting a date with the hangman. The final twist or reversal begins with the narrator’s overconfidence following the murder of his wife. The cat has also disappeared and he gets his first good night’s rest in sometime. His ego is his undoing though as he raps on the wall during a police search of his house, expecting only silence, but is horrified to hear the pitiful, deranged howl of the “monster” (the cat) which he interred with his wife’s dead body in the cellar wall. A cat has nine-lives and Pluto lives up to his name “rising from the grave” to get his revenge.

         The level and register of the language used by the narrator holds the reader’s attention and delivers the most horrific realization – the narrator has totally disassociated himself from the events that took place. The voice of the narrator is calm, almost triumphant throughout the tale with the exception of early references to his drunkenness or to the cat. He feels no remorse for the death of his wife, and blames everything that occurs on the cat – the monster, the fiend that has tormented his imagination throughout the tale. There is a level of formality to the syntax used by the narrator indicating upper-middle class society or education – probably a parallel for Poe’s own social status – interspersed with poverty-level economics especially after the house burns down. Poe also uses color words to add depth and contrast to the gothic scheme of his work even though the overall effect might appear monochromatic. “While deep reds, grays, shades of white and even striated color schemes are evident among his works, black is by far the most important color in Poe’s writings. In Poe’s works, the preponderance of the action is set during the darkest hours of the night, under stormy weather conditions or in deep shadows which dim even the brightest white and make his reds more terrifying” (Coviello, 2003). For example, the many possible interpretations of the word ‘black’ form a key component to the Gothic theme by emphasizing the darkness, the depth of the shadows, the presence of evil, death, hopelessness, or the empty void opening beneath the character’s feet. The Gothic theme of Poe’s literature reveals the dark, repressed memories, guilt, disturbing anxieties, and perversions hidden within the minds of a nation. “In literature, Gothic themes are often linked to cultural anxieties that undermine the American Dream, such as slavery, domestic violence, sexual perversity, and cruelty to animals” (Kirsch, 2012). It is easy then to see how critics of Poe’s works might find themselves repulsed by the violence and extremes of his narrators, but the stark horror found in stories such as The Black Cat raised and continue to raise the public awareness of these social issues via their ‘shock value.’ These are the social issues that are so abhorrent that no one wants to talk about them, but the need to change is undeniable.

While today Poe is a standard in the study of literature because of the many themes immersed within his works, it was not always so.



References



Atlantic. (1896, April). The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Retrieved from The Atalntic Monthly, Vol. 78, No. 462, pp. 551-554: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/classrev/poe2.htm



Coviello, P. (2003, Fall). Poe in Love: Pedophilia, Morbidity, and the Logic of Slavery. Retrieved from ELH, Vol. 70, No. 3, pp.875-901: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029902



Lynch, D. S., & Stillinger, J. (2006). The Gothic and the Development of a Mass Readership. In S. Greenblatt, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2, 8th Ed. (pp. 577-78). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.



Pettit, E. (2007, October 2). We're Taking Poe Back: For years, Baltimore has laid claim to one of our greatest writers. Nevermore! Retrieved from Philadelphia Citypaper: http://www.archives.citypaper.net/print-article.php?aid=13049



Poe, E. A. (1845). The Black Cat. In R. Diyanni, Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry and Drama, 2nd Ed. (pp. 137-143). New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.