Human Integrity in Poe's work

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen  Poe

           

            I wanted to take a different route than what we have been discussing in class and share my thoughts on Poe’s style of writing and uses of symbols to really question human integrity. “The Black Cat” is a story of mystery and suspense. The narrator confesses his tale of murder of his cat with each detail being more spine thrilling than the last. The tale is both a confession and a defense as the narrator makes the point “But to-morrow I die, and to-day I unburthen my soul”(230) but throughout his confession he finds ways to defend himself. He blames his acts of cruelty on alcohol, the cat and the spirit of perverseness.

            There is a lot going on in the tale.  As discussed in class Poe’s work uses different symbols as a way to question human integrity. In the case of “The Black Cat” Poe uses the black cats as his symbol. A black cat is thought to be superstitious, ‘a witch is disguise.’(231), and in the case of this tale, serves as a constant reminder of the narrator’s guilty conscience.

            After the narrator hangs the first cat he misses him, and wishes to replace him. “I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.”(233) There is the saying in life that you want what you can’t have, and I think it relates a lot to the narrator. He is regretting his actions and wants to fill a void. Is the best way to forget about something that was lost to replace it with the same thing? I think that the second black cat is really a symbol for narrator’s conscience and mind. The wanting of the second cat is the narrator’s way to ‘replace’ the first one, and therefore also ‘replace’ the memory associated with it.

            The next point where Poe touches on the ability of the human mind to rationalize and the integrity of people is in the paragraph on perverseness. The narrator begins his tale by describing his love for his animals and then his’ fiend intemperance’ that causes him to abuse them. He then goes on to say ‘perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart… have we not a perpetual inclination, to violate that which is law, merely because we understand it to be such?’ (232) The desire to do wrong simply because we know it to be wrong is not a good justification for murder nor really for anything. But so often we see acts of crime being committed for this very reason, because the inclination and desire to do so was there.

             I think Poe’s point in writing this tale was not only to provide a thrilling tale but to question where our morals and ethics come in. At which point in the story was that line crossed and these acts were no longer an act of perverseness? These weren’t acts that the narrator could rationalize, yet he does so in his confession, leading the readers to believe that he is psychologically impaired and therefore no questions of human integrity arise.