Give a critical analysis for the short story "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Written by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat" is a story of
horror, in the Poe tradition of other other horror stories like "The Tell-tale Heart"
and "The Cask of Amontillado." There are supernatural elements; ane these stories have a
narrator who is suspect because of his fragile grasp of reality—the sanity of the
narrator is in question. We can no longer be sure of the narrator's
reliability.

In "The Black Cat," our main character is
recounting a string of events that have led him to his fate. We find that what
he considers a "series of mere household events" are anything
but—eventually cementing the reader's sense of the narrator is mentally unstable. While
he wants the reader to sympathize with him, it is impossible because his psyche is so
fragmented. Like the narrator in "The Cask of Amontillado," this man wants the reader to
understand his actions, which is an impossible task when dealing
with madness: he does not deal with logic or
reason.

Thinking himself "excitable," the narrator expects
that perhaps someone else can shed some light on this
story:

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Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found
which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place...which will perceive... nothing more
than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and
effects.

The narrator begins
to present his defense; he says that from the time he was a child, he was "docile" and
"tender of heart." He describes his love of animals as a child, but his character
suffers when he says that he never outgrew this youthful,
child-like attachment to animals.

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This peculiar of character grew with my growth,
and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of
pleasure.

There is foreboding
when he call a pet a "brute:" Companionship?—yes. Devotion?? The narrator marries and
his wife loves animals, too, but she shares concern about Pluto's color and "witches,"
which he dismisses as a meaningless
notion.

(Note, "Pluto," is the Greek god of the underworld,
the Roman god of Hades; a place of the dead. The cat may symbolize
death.)

Then, the speaker admits to a
drastic change in his character. He drinks, becomes moody and abusive to his wife, and
to his animals. Frightened one night by his owner, Pluto bites him, and the speaker
snaps. He cuts out the cat's eye. The cat heals but now avoids him. The perverse anger
he feels at the cat's fear is troubling. The image of the true man emerges as he chooses
to kill the cat for no good reason. He hangs the cat from a tree—while believing he
commits a great sin.

There seems a link between "disaster
and atrocity:" his house burns down that night. He finds another cat very similar and
brings it home, but soon comes to hate it, though it adores him.
Its white chest looks like a gallows. The narrator' has nightmares of the cat on his
face. His hatred grows, and so he tries to kill it, but kills his
interfering wife instead.

Without
remorse, the narrator hides the body in a basement wall. The cat disappears. Four days
later the police call. The speaker is proud of his job in hiding the body, and following
them, he draws attention to the new wall as they start to leave, hitting it with his
cane. At once, a sound erupts from the hidden space: "a wailing shriek, half of horror
and half of triumph."

And so, his crime is exposed—he will
die. This "tender hearted man" is a fiend, completely insane—exposed by his nemesis, the
black cat—but which one...or the same one? Poe leaves us with delicious
questions.