THE DEEP ONES: "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

Discussion begins April 5, 2023.

First published in the August 19, 1843 issue of the United States Saturday Post.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?84431

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Tales of Mystery & Imagination

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://poestories.com/read/blackcat
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/POE/black.html

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Qbedgqyws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVSOwfzQkw

MISCELLANY

https://www.eapoe.org/papers/psblctrs/pl20121.htm
https://crimereads.com/real-life-mystery-edgar-allan-poes-the-black-cat/
https://www.life.com/animals/black-cats/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
https://tinyurl.com/mtschyf2

I’d read this one once before, back in the 1990s, but didn’t really recall anything apart from the central image of the accidentally immured cat revealing the murder.

The only clearly supernatural element is the relatively minor one of the cat’s white mark changing into a gallows. I sort of think the story might have been stronger without it.

It’s a good story though, with a good example of Poe’s portrayals of an unsound mind.

Interesting how many of Poe’s most famous tropes appear in this story. The Imp of Perverse, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado all share elements with this story.
Even by today’s standards this was a very disturbing tale.

>3 papijoe: I was especially struck by the similarities to "The Tell-Tale Heart". When I looked at the chronology of Poe's work, I see he composed that one right before writing this one.

The description of the degradations of alcoholism was interesting whether it was from observation, imagination, or personal experience. Poe wouldn't take the temperance pledge for another six years after this story.

>3 papijoe:

It struck me while reading that another of his favorite tropes didn't appear - that of the death of a beautiful woman. A woman dies, of course, but nothing is made of her appearance, and her death is not particularly focused on; it's there for the narrator to be guilty of murder.

Before we read "The Tell-Tale Heart" a while go, I'd got the two stories more-or-less mixed up in my head.

The explanation that the narrator gives for the appearance of Pluto's image on the surviving wall of his burnt-down house is so unlikely as to perhaps be an intimation of a supernatural element to the story. The "cat's corpse thrown through a window to rouse the occupants, getting squashed into wet plaster, undergoing a chemical reaction" is more of an explaining away than an explanation.

I think I read something - quite recently too, but online and I'll never find it again - that Poe was maybe parodying something or somebody with this part of his story. But who? Who was producing tales including lines of inductive reasoning in print, even before Poe had invented the modern detective story?

If it's the case that the image sets the story on a supernatural track - even if the narrator refuses to see that - then it suggests that Pluto's replacement is no ordinary cat, even if it's apparently flesh and blood. I'm not at all sure what it would be - reincarnation, ghost, spirit of vengeance? But then, as M.R. James reportedly said of the supernatural world, "we don't know the rules".

It is easy to get elements of this story confused in the memory with "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado". In fact, I've just realised that "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" share a motif of a damaged eye that's repulsive to the protagonist. That's on top of the murder, bricking-up, or hiding a corpse behind the fabric of a house, and the search by the authorities that's only successful because of the murderer's last-minute self-sabotage. (I'm not saying all three stories share all those elements. Please imagine them filling the various sectors of a Venn diagram!).

I have got this story in at least four Poe collections and it's likely to be in some multi-author anthologies too, but I reread it in this chapbook from Thornwillow Press.


The last time I read the story was only in 2021 when I received this.

It's also turned up in quite a few film versions of Poe that I've acquired on disc in recent years.

>6 housefulofpaper:

It’s still more of an explanation than the gallows-mark gets. But yeah, we’re at least to suspect the the supernatural at work there too.

I was wondering about the new cat being a reincarnation of the old, but if so it’s apparently not the usual kind, as not enough time appears to have passed for the new one to have reached the original’s age.

Now I’m wondering if I should have thought of cats having nine lives?

>7 AndreasJ:

Now I’m wondering if I should have thought of cats having nine lives?
That's an interesting idea!

There are some Poe stories (particularly "The Angel of the Odd" if I'm remembering correctly) that seem to share the same storytelling logic as the Warner Bros Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons, which had their share of supernaturalism and dark themes that would earn a trigger warning now, played for laughs, and indeed cats using up their lives and repeatedly returning from Heaven or Hell. In fact I began to wonder if they could both be slotted into a timeline of American tall tales, or if I'd imagined a whole tradition on the strength of a couple of examples!

Or, if the imp of the perverse wasn't driving Poe to hide a broad joke in this serious story, maybe he could rely on the notion of cats having nine lives, and more broadly the folk notion that they are a bit unearthly, or even satanic (witch's familiars and so forth) that he could barely suggest something supernatural about the cat, and assume the reader would go along with it for the duration of the story.

Speaking of connections to other Poe stories, another take on the 2nd cat would be as an exteriorized conscience, a sort of feline William Wilson.

Last Halloween-time, I was pleased to discover that my daughter's 7th grade English class was reading "The Black Cat" together in the classroom. Owing to its gruesomeness and cruelty to kitty-kats, I would never have considered that it stood the remotest chance for selection. I think they got lucky with a brave teacher who happens to have excellent taste in literature.

While one-eyed cats, especially ones who live at least part-time outdoors, aren't a rare thing to come across. I like to think the second cat was definitely Pluto returned, however he accomplished it.