The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe - Notes

The narrator is about to tell a wild, yet ordinary story.
He doesn't expect belief, as his senses reject the evidence.
He is not mad or dreaming but is about to die tomorrow and wants to unburden his soul today.
He aims to present a series of household events plainly and succinctly.
These events have terrified, tortured, and destroyed him.
He won't try to explain them, as they've only presented horror.
He hopes someone will find a commonplace explanation for his phantasm.

From infancy, the narrator was known for his docility and humanity.
His tenderness was so conspicuous that it made him the subject of jokes among his peers.
He was fond of animals and had many pets.
He spent time feeding and caressing them.
This love for animals grew with him, becoming a principal source of pleasure in adulthood.
He highlights the unique love of animals compared to humans.

The narrator married early and found in his wife a similar disposition.
She also had a partiality for domestic pets.
They had birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
The cat was large, black, and intelligent.
The wife jokingly alluded to the superstition that black cats are witches in disguise.
The cat, named Pluto, was the narrator’s favorite.
The narrator alone fed Pluto and Pluto followed him everywhere.
Their friendship lasted for years.

The narrator's temperament changed for the worse due to intemperance.
He became moody, irritable, and disregardful of others' feelings.
He used intemperate language and, at length, offered personal violence to his wife.
His pets were neglected and ill-used, except for Pluto.
He still had enough regard for Pluto to not mistreat him, unlike the other pets.
His disease, alcohol, grew upon him, affecting Pluto as well.

One night, intoxicated, the narrator thought Pluto avoided him.
He seized Pluto, who, in fright, slightly wounded his hand with his teeth.
The narrator was overtaken by fury. He felt his soul take flight and was filled with malevolence.
He took a penknife, grasped Pluto, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket.
He felt horror and remorse in the morning but soon drowned the memory in wine.
Pluto slowly recovered, but the narrator grew irritated by Pluto's terror of him.

The spirit of perverseness came to his final overthrow.
The narrator describes perverseness as a primitive impulse of the human heart, driving people to do wrong for the sake of doing wrong.
This spirit urged him to continue and consummate the injury inflicted on Pluto.

One morning, in cold blood, he hung Pluto from a tree.
He did it with tears and remorse because he knew Pluto loved him and had given no offense.
He knew he was committing a deadly sin. He felt it would jeopardize his soul.

On the night of the hanging, the house caught fire.
The narrator, his wife, and a servant escaped with difficulty.
The house was completely destroyed.
The narrator doesn't seek to establish cause and effect but wishes to detail the facts.
The day after the fire, he visited the ruins and saw a wall with the image of a gigantic cat, with a rope around its neck, as if in bas-relief.
He reasoned the cat had been thrown through a window during the fire, pressed into the plaster, and the lime, flames, and ammonia created the portrait.
This made a deep impression on his fancy.

For months, he couldn't rid himself of the cat's phantasm.
He regretted Pluto's loss and looked for a similar cat.
In a den, he saw a black cat on a hogshead of gin or rum.
It was as large as Pluto and resembled him except for a white splotch on its breast.
The cat purred and rubbed against him. The narrator offered to buy it but the landlord disclaimed it.
The cat followed him home and became a favorite with his wife.

The cat's partiality increased, following him constantly.
It would crouch under his chair, spring onto his knees, and get between his feet.
He longed to destroy it but was held back by his former crime and dread of the beast.
His terror was heightened by the white mark on the cat's breast, which gradually formed the image of a gallows.
He loathed and dreaded the monster.
He was wretched, tormented by the brute beast, and knew neither rest nor peace.
He dreamt of the cat.

Evil thoughts filled him.
His moodiness increased to hatred.
His wife was the most frequent and patient sufferer of his outbursts.
One day, in the cellar, the cat nearly tripped him, leading him to attempt to kill it with an axe.
His wife stopped him, and in a fit of rage, he buried the axe in her brain, killing her instantly.

He deliberated on how to conceal the body.
He considered dismemberment, burial in the cellar floor, casting it in the well, or packing it in a box.
He decided to wall it up in the cellar, like the monks of the Middle Ages.
The cellar was well-suited, with loosely constructed walls and damp plaster.
There was a projection caused by a false chimney.
He dislodged the bricks, placed the body, and re-laid the bricks.
He prepared plaster indistinguishable from the old and covered the brickwork.
He felt satisfied that all was right.

In a frenzy of bravado, he rapped heavily with his cane on the brickwork behind which was his wife's corpse.
A voice from within the tomb answered his blows.
It was a cry, muffled at first, then swelling into a long, loud, continuous scream.
The police toiled at the wall, and it fell bodily.
The corpse, decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect.
Upon its head sat the hideous beast, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire.
The narrator had walled the monster up within the tomb.