The narrator uses a lot of symbolism. There are so many examples of symbolism but I am only going to use the ones that had appealed to me first. He uses symbolism to show the capacity for human actions and feelings. The ones that appealed to me the most and are in order is the human conscience, that guilty feeling you get when you know you did something bad (as does the narrator many times in the course of the story, which causes him to have more guilt and more of a conscience than most people), and finally the feeling that people get sometimes, superstition. These are the three main human wisdoms that had been most used in the whole story. I thought that these ones were the main ones that a majority of people could relate too, especially people in my age group.
The human wisdom that Poe has put into this story can be any number of things. The first thing that is or can be human wisdom is that all humans have a conscience. I think this shows when the man thinks he should buy a new cat once he had murdered his first black cat, Pluto, this is just a mild example though. Another major example from the story is when the man kills his wife and the cops go to his house and search for her. When the cops are about to leave after they hadn't found anything he started to talk a lot sort of like he was getting anxious. This shows that he had a major conscience about what he had done to his wife. If I were him I would have never done that but if I had I would have acted like that around some cops too. This human wisdom was more appealing to me because I have done things that have caused my conscience to go into overdrive. This is just something that happens to everyone at some point in their lives. This is a good example of how Poe was trying to get human wisdom across. When he uses his conscience to actually think about what he is going to do next he doesn't do bad. It's once he ignores it and especially when he starts to drink the alcohol is when he starts to do bad. When he drank the alcohol he started to have a temper with everyone. He had a temper with his wife all his animals and most of all with his cats, both of them. When he killed Pluto this is when he started to get really bad and his conscience kicked in and he started to think about how bad that was. That's when he decided to get another cat only this one had a single white spot across his chest. Yet again he started to mistreat this cat too because of the alcohol and because this cat reminded him of Pluto.
Another human wisdom that can be gained from "The Black Cat" is the feeling of guilt. There are many examples in the story that can show when this man has the feeling of guilt, one of which is when he cuts out Pluto's eye and then feels guilty after the deed has been done. This is one feeling that most people can relate to no matter what their age. Guilt is the feeling you get when you do something bad and you know that it was bad and people won't approve of whatever it is that you have done. This is a feeling that the narrator has a lot throughout the whole story because he does many things that are worth being guilty over. One major thing that he does that I can think of is when he kills his wife. This is the climax of the story and also when he is struck with the most powerful feeling of guilt. This is also when his conscience starts to grow.
Another human wisdom gained from the story is superstition. Many people are superstitious when they cross a black cat's path. The man's wife was very superstitious about a black cat, Pluto, living in their house. I think superstition is the key or the main human wisdom of the story. I think this because the story is called "The Black Cat" and once he does one bad or cruel thing to Pluto things start to go downhill from there. For example, his house catches fire, etc. When the second black cat came into the picture there were also symbols showing that it wouldn't end well but he didn't pay attention to those signs either. The second black cat's spot on his chest, the white spot, is just a spot. Then one day the man starts to notice that it is turning into a noose just like the one that he had hung Pluto with. This is a sign that meant there was nothing good that would come from it. He should have thought twice once he noticed that it was starting to look like a noose. Alcohol also played a major role in the way that this man was treating his wife and the way that he was treating his animals especially Pluto. He needed to stop drinking the alcohol so he wouldn't have such bad guilt about what he was doing or better yet he shouldn't have done half of the things that he had done throughout the whole story because that’s the reason why he started to drink the alcohol. It did in fact play a major role in the story though; it ended in the killing of his wife.
The three main human wisdoms that I had gotten out of the story is the fact that humans have a conscience, the fact that humans can feel guilt after they commit an act particularly a bad act, and the main one would be that some or maybe even most humans feel superstition and that can lead to something really good or really bad. In this particular case, it leads to bad.
0 comments:
Post a Comment