"black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

Olivia Reyes

Period 2

Mrs. Villasenor

In the black cat by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is a man who has had a very difficult time growing up. He has been ignored, picked on, and unfriended by the people in his life. The only “people” in which he found joy and refuge in were his pets because they had an unconditional love for him and didn’t do anything to hurt him. Unfortunately, later in his life he gets hurt by a black cat, his best friend,and takes his (the cat’s) life and later the life of his wife due to jelousies he experiences with her and a new cat, the replacement for the one he killed.

In the story, like typical people, he trys to replace his beloved ,yet deadcat with another one similar to it . “I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal,and to look about me ,among the vile haunts which I now frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance , with which to supply its place”(poe par13). This shows how people need to replace the items they lost to make them feel better about life because the hole created by the loss would be void due to the replacement. He does it so he doesn’t have to feel remorseful about killing the cat even though,he feels the grief brought on by the old, dead cat.the new cat doesn’t patch up the holebut, it pesters it by bringing up old feelings through new jelousies.

When he sees that the new cat has become fond of his wife and not him, he gets jelous of his wife because he believes that she stole the cat’s love from him. His mind is so filled with jelousy and rage that it causes him to act out:

The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and,