Born in America, at the beginning of the 19th century (1809), in a period in which Romanticism dominated the

whole artistic field, Edgar Allen Poe’s work represents an essential point on the trajectory of literature evolution.
The creator of the short-story genre and the precursor of the modern fictional literature, Poe is considered not
only a great poet and writer, but also one of the first theorists of literature (he introduces the principle of art for
art's sake) . A crucial event in the author's biography was the death of his mother, who suffered from tuberculosis.
Being witness at her dying, the child Poe lives a profound drama which determined his obsession for ill/ death
women (this fact it is reflected in his texts by the way in which female portraits are constructed- for example we
can think of Ligeia, of the twin sister from “The fall of house of the house of Usher” and also of the narrator's wife
from The Black Cat) and a strange attraction for morbid subjects. Another biographical element mirrored by Poe's
texts is the author's alcoholism and his hypersensitivity (a lot of characters have this kind of imbalances - from
Usher or the narrator of “The tell-tale heart” to the narrator from The black cat).
"The Black Cat" was first published in 1843 and it's a text which explores the dark dimensions of humans with
their impulses to do bad and with their desire to manifest what Poe describes as " the Spirit of Perverseness": Who
has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he
knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate what is
Low, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overview. It
was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself- to offer violence to its own nature-to do wrong for the
wrong’s sake only…”. Thus, many of the narrator's acts are without logic or motivation; they are merely acts of
perversity- he doesn't have any rational reasons to torture his animals, in special to torture Pluto- who gave him so
much affection, as he also doesn't have any plausible motivation to aggress his wife. Interesting is the fact that the
narrator seems aware of his madness, but he acts as if he cannot control himself: his body becomes a vehicle of
some inner animal forces, too strong to be repressed, coming from his unconscious.
The title of the story prepares the reader for a text with fantastic valances, considering that the black cat is
associated, in the majority of the world's cultures, with the evil magic, being perceived as a metamorphosed form
of a witch. The influential literary critic Tzvetan Todorov introduced the concept of the “fantastic” in the early
1970s to discuss literature of horror, and the idea can be applied usefully to “The Black Cat.” The fantastic, he
asserts, explores the indefinite boundary between the real and the supernatural. The fantastic is a literary category
that contains elements of both the rational and the irrational. One of the fantastic elements in “The Black Cat” is
the existence of the second cat—with the changing shape of its white fur and its appearance and its unusual
resemblance to Pluto. This plot twists challenge reality, but it does not completely substitute a supernatural
explanation for a logical one. It is possible that the plot twist derives only from the insanity of the narrator. Thus,
the story itself is both rationally possible and tremendously unlikely: the cat could inhabit the basement walls, but
it is difficult to believe that it would remain silently in the wall for a long time or go unnoticed by the overly
meticulous narrator. Thus, the story itself is both rationally possible and tremendously unlikely; the cat could
inhabit the basement walls, but it is difficult to believe that it would remain silently in the wall for a long time or go
unnoticed by the overly meticulous narrator. The story also gives as an uncanny feeling, as it brings to light, in
symbolic clothing, the fears and anxieties deeply buried in narrator’s mind. However, although we expect the cat
to be the one evil, by reading the story we find out that this image is only constructed through the eyes of a
paranoiac narrator, he himself monstrous and unscrupulous.
The black cat is written at the first person, through the perspective of a central narrator (he's talking about things
that he did or things that happened to him, rather than things he watched, or heard about), also unreliable (-he
declares in the first lines: “I neither expect, nor solicit belief”. - this confession asks for an active receptor, who
must be a good observant of the eventual "errors" of the story). The text presents the gradually psychological
degradation of a man (the narrator), who, although in his youth was a kind being, loving the animals, by the
passing of years starts to have a more and more violent behavior, so that, in the end, after he mistreated his pets,
he kills his favorite companion- Pluto, and then he also kills his wife, whom he buries in the walls of the house
cellar together with Pluto's "twin"- who was still alive and who will reveal the murder by doing some noises (the
motif of " buried alive" is also used in other stories as The fall of the house of usher or “The Tell- Tale Heart”). The
text also contains a great number of symbolic elements, which grow its ambiguity and provokes the reader to an
involving reading, that overcomes the superficial stratum of the narration per se. So, the name of the black cat-
Pluto, makes direct reference to the ruler of the underworld in classical mythology, being, ths way, a symbol of
death. The fact that the cat is half blind gives it a "prophetic aura" (considering that the majority of the prophets of
ancient Greece were blind)- thus, Pluto can be seen as a prophet of death, of total decay.
 The color of his fur itself announces death. A symbolic character has also the space in which the narrator lives. If
in the period when he acted on the basis rationality he lived "on" earth , after he kills Pluto and his house was
burned by fire he is forced to move in the cellar. Making a connection with Jung's dream, his "descending" "under
the earth" can be interpreted as the moment that marks the total abandon of lucidity, a unchaining of inner
irrational wishes that conduct him in the arms of his greatest fear: the death.
To conclude, this story, like most of Edgar Allan Poe's stories fascinates because it is an open fantastic text,
having a lot of ambiguities created by the usage of symbols, giving the reader the chance of situating himself at
different levels of interpretation and understanding.