The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example The narrator does not seem to be the slightest troubled by the apparent loss of both his wife and his sanity. Through the narrator, Poe leads you on with a drastic chain of events and inner thoughts. He builds the story upon his detailed description of the events that took place and leads the reader into overdrive with astonishing actions. It follows that the literary element most notable in The Black Cat is Poe’s utilization of the narrator’s point of view to advance moral and psychological investigations. This essay then considers the narrator’s first person perspective and examines the ways that it is utilized to advance the literary and narrative elements of moral structure, characterization, and narrative elements. Edgar Allen Poe’s use of the narrator’s point of view in The Black Cat furthers the story’s moral dilemma in many regards. One of the most prominent ways this occurs is in its consideration of the man’s relation with his wife. While in great degree he treats her poorly and is a dysfunctional human being, she is depicted, even through his admittedly perverse perspective, to be an upstanding and humane individual. It follows that the woman’s depiction as an upstanding individual who cares for animals functions to increase the reader’s sympathy for her after the man ruthlessly murders her with the axe. It’s also notable that the man, while feeling remorse and debilitating guilt after murdering the cat, feels virtually no such guilt after murdering his wife. In these regards, the narrative reveals an element of his psychological perversion. While this event is perhaps the most significant in terms of criminal actions, one can just as easi ly identify his torture and eventual murder of the original cat as the narrator’s most strikingly perverse and immoral acts. Poe makes excellent use of the 1st person perspective in gauging the significance of this event to the narrator’s psyche. He