However, narrator’s kind personality is gradually destroyed by alcohol abuse leading to domestic violence.

The police open the wall and find the narrator’s wife, along with the black and white cat, whom the narrator had accidentally walled up with her body.The Black Cat is a story of moral decay of the narrator who is lucky to have a happy marriage and a lot of pets, Pluto the cat, “ favorite pet and playmate” (Poe 249) among them. At that moment, a wailing and screaming comes from behind the plaster. The narrator, however, is unbothered because he knows they’ll never find his wife.Īs the police are about to leave the cellar and the premises for good, the narrator takes his cane and raps on the cellar wall to boast about the construction of the house. Three or four days pass, and the police finally come to search the premises.

The cat seems to have fled, and the narrator sleeps peacefully for the first time in a long time. The narrator walls his wife up within the wall of the cellar. One day, on the way to the cellar, the cat trips the narrator on the stairs and he raises an axe to kill him he is stopped by his wife, and in a rage, he kills her with the axe instead. The spot on his chest begins to resemble a gallows, frightening the narrator. The more the narrator avoids the cat, the more he follows him. The cat is also missing an eye, like Pluto. The cat loves the narrator, and because of his guilt from past deeds, the narrator begins to loathe the cat. He begins to search for a new cat, and finds a large black one with a white splotch on its chest at one of the taverns he frequents. The narrator explains it away, but is nonetheless shaken. The following day, the narrator visits the ruins of the house and finds on the one standing wall an image of a cat with a rope around its neck. Later that night, the narrator’s entire house burns down. The narrator becomes so angry at Pluto’s avoidance that one day, he decides to hang him from a tree. Pluto, of course, avoided the narrator and the narrator began to be irritated by this. He is ashamed in the present of his deed, but back then, his shame only lasted a short while. One night, in a drunken stupor, the narrator thinks Pluto is avoiding him, so he seizes him and cuts out one of his eyes. The narrator confesses that he is an alcoholic, and this made him violent towards everyone – his wife and his pets, but he was able to keep himself from abusing Pluto.

He married young and his wife made sure they had many animals, especially one particularly large black cat named Pluto. He was a peculiar boy, particularly fond of animals. The narrator is telling his story as a condemned man, flashing back to the beginning. Example “The Black Cat” Plot Diagram Exposition

The black cat allan poe