1. The Black Cat Writing style, Tone, Symbolism, Imagery, Allusion
and lots of other interpretive doors that will open for you…

2. “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style”
Humbert Humbert, from Lolita, By Vladimir Nabokov

3. Writing Style in The Black Cat
Punctuation
Sentence structure
Word Choice – focus on verbs and adjectives and their connotations
Length of sentences, paragraphs, the story itself
Linguistic ‘games’
Unreliability of the Narrator

4. Linguistic games…Wait, What?
“Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.”
What does he mean and what is it about this quotation that makes it so cryptic?

5. “Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.”
The writing is decorative, full of flourishes
Passivity
References to worry and guilt but the tone suggests something different
WHY????

6. Can you find an example of the narrator being cryptic
Can you find an example of the narrator being cryptic? Why do you think Poe make this choice as an author?

7. Tone
To understand tone, you must imagine what the narrator would sound like if you could hear him.
What is interesting about The Black Cat is that multiple tones can exist within the same sentences/paragraphs
Often in conflict with each other/the idea/the imagery/meaning being conveyed

8. Tone
Read paragraph 2, P.11
Describe the tone in this paragraph – focus on verbs and adjectives, think about the connotations of these words and what is actually happening in comparison to the tone in which it is conveyed.
Consider punctuation and how it helps to convey tone

9. Tone
“I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity” (Right after cutting out Pluto’s eye)
Examine the verbs, adjectives and punctuation when examining the tone of a piece of writing
Tone is urgent, ashamed
Punctuation, repetition - urgency
“blush” and “burn” - physical signs associated with shame
“shudder” – anguish
Having said that, the verbs lack subtlety – full of melodrama and flamboyance

10. The Narrator’s Trickery
“I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity” (Right after cutting out Pluto’s eye)
“pen the damnable atrocity”
Examine this quote in terms of grammar
What is the “damnable atrocity”?
Remember that Poe uses a “pen-knife” to cut out the cat’s eye…

11. Narrator as an extension of Poe himself
“I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity” (Right after cutting out Pluto’s eye)
To “pen” is to “write”
Grammatically, he is describing his writing as a “damnable atrocity” rather than the act of violence against the cat
If we step outside of the story, what does this suggest about Poe himself (in the context of what we know of him)?

12. “Pen-Knife” as Symbol
The “pen-knife” used to sharpen the a quill pen
There is a clear link between violence and writing here
The narratior could be seen as “showing off”, using trickery against the reader, rather than expressing true shame
Part of the story’s power is the possibility of sincerity rather than the existence of it
From a psychoanalytical perspective, what could we say about the emergence of the subconscious in this line?
Is he pretending to be ashamed? Or is he actually ashamed?

13. Pen-Knife as Symbol
Its potential as a weapon is fulfilled by the narrator
Symbolically sharpens the cat’s eye with his knife
The reader’s eyes are sharpened also
The act signifies changing vision
How does the story become an allegory about writing?

14. Allusion - definition
A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place or event – real or fictional
Could be
Historical
Cultural
Mythological
Literary
Political
Private

15. Examples of Allusions to Poe

16. Public Enemy “welcome to the terrordrome / caught in the race against time / the pit and the pendulum” From Fear of a Black Planet RDBmmS5Odu6Ag#t=10

17. The Lost Boys

18. Pluto - Allusion Pluto Roman God of the Underworld
Not the ruler of death but the ruler of the dead
His best friend was a three headed dog
Hello, psychoanalysis anyone??????

20. Imagery
“The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees nearly imperceptible[…] it had, at length, resumed a rigorous distinctness of outline”
What is he talking about here?

21. Gallows as Symbol 2nd cat wears a symbol of Pluto’s murder
Symbolises guilt, depravity, a visual reminder of his crime, the transformation of his personality
Could be seen as foreshadowing the narrator’s own death by hanging

22. Historical Context and potential for a Postcolonial reading
Poe was considered by many as a Southern writer because he spent so much time in the southern states.
He was writing in a time that was before the abolition of slavery
Common to see black people hanging from a tree
How could the whole story be read as a gothic commentary on slavery?

23. The Cellar
“into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit”
“I determined to wall it up in the cellar, as the Monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims”
“It’s walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening”
The writer keeps us confined in the cellar for the rest of the story.
We are “walled up” with him… “trapped”

24. The Cellar – Allusion through Setting
Gothic literature employs the literary device of the “grotesque”
Derived from Italian -“grotto”, or “cave”
In Gothic literature a cave, or cellar, or place of confinement, represents an inner world, or mind of a character
Connections between cellar and jail cell

25. The Axe Symbol of the man’s complete descent into violent breakdown
He “buried the axe in her brain”
This is narrated with such clarity
Marks his transition between cruel violence towards and murder of an animal to his complete descent into murder
He has graduated from the “pen-knife” to the “axe”
“this hideous murder accomplished”