GOVERNMRNT COLLEGE UNIVERSITY FAISALABAD

2016

DISTANCE LEARING EDUCATION

PROGRAMS

 ASSIGNMENT NO. 1
 Short Stories


 SECTION.

 M.A ENGLISH

 NAME.

 ROLL NO.

 DATED.


Q.1 Write a comprehensive note on the evolution of short story as an art
form?

Short story,

Britannica Classic: What Is a Short Story? [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica,

Inc.]brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals
with only a few characters.

The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a
few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting,
concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in
action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively
limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a
“complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.

Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct
literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely modern
genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself.
Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests,
anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales,
short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these constitutes a short
story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part
of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.

Analysis of the genre

As a genre, the short story received relatively little critical attention through the
middle of the 20th century, and the most valuable studies of the form were often
limited by region or era. In his The Lonely Voice (1963), the Irish short story writer
Frank O’Connor attempted to account for the genre by suggesting that stories are a
means for “submerged population groups” to address a dominating community.
Most other theoretical discussions, however, were predicated in one way or another
on Edgar Allan Poe’s thesis that stories must have a compact unified effect.

By far the majority of criticism on the short story focused on techniques of writing.
Many, and often the best of the technical works, advise the young reader—alerting
the reader to the variety of devices and tactics employed by the skilled writer. On
the other hand, many of these works are no more than treatises on “how to write
stories” for the young writer rather than serious critical material.

The prevalence in the 19th century of two words, “sketch” and “tale,” affords one
way of looking at the genre. In the United States alone there were virtually
hundreds of books claiming to be collections of sketches (Washington Irving’s The
Sketch Book, William Dean Howells’s Suburban Sketches) or collections of tales
(Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Herman Melville’s The Piazza
Tales). These two terms establish the polarities of the milieu out of which the
modern short story grew.

The tale is much older than the sketch. Basically, the tale is a manifestation of a
culture’s unaging desire to name and conceptualize its place in the cosmos. It
provides a culture’s narrative framework for such things as its vision of itself and
its homeland or for expressing its conception of its ancestors and its gods. Usually
filled with cryptic and uniquely deployed motifs, personages, and symbols, tales
are frequently fully understood only by members of the particular culture to which
they belong. Simply, tales are intracultural. Seldom created to address an outside
culture, a tale is a medium through which a culture speaks to itself and thus
perpetuates its own values and stabilizes its own identity. The old speak to the
young through tales.
History

Origins

The evolution of the short story first began before humans could write. To aid in
constructing and memorizing tales, the early storyteller often relied on stock
phrases, fixed rhythms, and rhyme. Consequently, many of the oldest narratives in
the world, such as the ancient Babylonian tale the Epic of Gilgamesh, are in verse.
Indeed, most major stories from the ancient Middle East were in verse: “The War
of the Gods,” “The Story of Adapa” (both Babylonian), “The Heavenly Bow,” and
“The King Who Forgot” (both Canaanite). Those tales were inscribed in cuneiform
on clay during the 2nd millennium bce.

FROM EGYPT TO INDIA

The earliest tales extant from Egypt were composed on papyrus at a comparable
date. The ancient Egyptians seem to have written their narratives largely in prose,
apparently reserving verse for their religious hymns and working songs. One of the
earliest surviving Egyptian tales, “The Shipwrecked Sailor” (c. 2000 bce), is
clearly intended to be a consoling and inspiring story to reassure its aristocratic
audience that apparent misfortune can in the end become good fortune. Also
recorded during the 12th dynasty were the success story of the exile Sinuhe and the
moralizing tale called “King Cheops [Khufu] and the Magicians.” The provocative
and profusely detailed story “The Tale of Two Brothers” (or “Anpu and Bata”) was
written down during the New Kingdom, probably around 1250 bce. Of all the early
Egyptian tales, most of which are baldly didactic, this story is perhaps the richest
in folk motifs and the most intricate in plot.

THE GREEKS

The early Greeks contributed greatly to the scope and art of short fiction. As in
India, the moralizing animal fable was a common form; many of these tales were
collected as Aesop’s fables, the first known collection of which dates to the 4th
century bce. Brief mythological stories of the gods’ adventures in love and war
were also popular in the pre-Attic age. Apollodorus of Athens compiled a
handbook of epitomes, or abstracts, of those tales around the 2nd century bce, but
the tales themselves are no longer extant in their original form. They appear,
though somewhat transformed, in the longer poetical works of Hesiod, Homer, and
the tragedians. Short tales found their way into long prose forms as well, as in
Hellanicus’s Persika (5th century bce, extant only in fragments).

Middle Ages, Renaissance, and after

PROLIFERATION OF FORMS

The Middle Ages in Europe was a time of the proliferation, though not necessarily
the refinement, of short narratives. The short tale became an important means of
diversion and amusement. From the medieval era to the Renaissance, various
cultures adopted short fiction for their own purposes. Even the aggressive, grim
spirit of the invading Germanic barbarians was amenable to expression in short
prose. The myths and sagas extant in Scandinavia and Iceland indicate the kinds of
bleak and violent tales the invaders took with them into southern Europe.

Decline of short fiction

The 17th and 18th centuries mark the temporary decline of short fiction in the
West. The causes of this phenomenon are many: the emergence of the novel; the
failure of the Boccaccio tradition to produce in three centuries much more than
variations or imitations of older, well-worn material; and a renaissant fascination
with drama and poetry, the superior forms of classical antiquity. Another cause for
the disappearance of major works of short fiction is suggested by the growing
preference for journalistic sketches. The increasing awareness of other lands and
the growing interest in social conditions (accommodated by a publication boom)
produced a plethora of descriptive and biographical sketches. Although these
journalistic elements later were incorporated in the fictional short story, for the
time being fact held sway over the imagination. Travel books, criminal
biographies, social description, sermons, and essays occupied the market. Only
occasionally did a serious story find its way into print, and then it was usually a
production of an established writer like Voltaire or Joseph Addison.

Emergence of the modern short story

THE 19TH CENTURY

The modern short story emerged almost simultaneously in Germany, the United
States, France, and Russia. In Germany there had been relatively little difference
between the stories of the late 18th century and those in the older tradition of
Boccaccio. In 1795 Goethe contributed a set of stories to Friedrich Schiller’s
journal, Die Horen, that were obviously created with the Decameron in mind.
Significantly, Goethe did not call them “short stories” (Novellen) although the term
was available to him. Rather, he thought of them as “entertainments” for German
travelers (Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten). Friedrich Schlegel’s early
discussion of the short narrative form, appearing soon after Goethe’s
“entertainments,” also focused on Boccaccio (Nachrichten von den poetischen
Werken des G. Boccaccio, 1801).

But a new type of short fiction was near at hand—a type that accepted some of the
realistic properties of popular journalism. In 1827, 32 years after publishing his
own “entertainments,” Goethe commented on the difference between the newly
emergent story and the older kind. “What is a short story,” he asked, “but an event
which, though unheard of, has occurred? Many a work which passes in Germany
under the title ‘short story’ is not a short story at all, but merely a tale or what else
you would like to call it.” Two influential critics, Christoph Wieland and Friedrich
Schleiermacher, also argued that a short story properly concerned itself with events
that actually happened or could happen. A short story, for them, had to be realistic.
FRENCH WRITERS

The new respect for the short story was also evident in France, as Henry James
observed, “when [in 1844 Prosper] Mérimée, with his handful of little stories, was
elected to the French Academy.” As illustrated by “Columbia” (1841) or “Carmen”
(1845), which gained additional fame as an opera, Mérimée’s stories are
masterpieces of detached and dry observation, though the subject matter itself is
often emotionally charged. Nineteenth-century France produced short stories as
various as 19th-century America—although the impressionist tale was generally
less common in France. (It is as if, not having an outstanding impressionist
storyteller themselves, the French adopted Poe, who was being ignored by the
critics in his own country.) The two major French impressionist writers were
Charles Nodier, who experimented with symbolic fantasies, and Gérard de Nerval,
whose collection Les Filles du feu (1854; “Daughters of Fire”) grew out of
recollections of his childhood. Artists primarily known for their work in other
forms also attempted the short story—novelists like Honoré de Balzac and Gustave
Flaubert and poets like Alfred de Vigny and Théophile Gautier.

RUSSIAN WRITERS

During the first two decades of the 19th century in Russia, fable writing became a
fad. By all accounts the most widely read fabulist was Ivan Krylov whose stories
borrowed heavily from Aesop, La Fontaine, and various Germanic sources. If
Krylov’s tales made short prose popular in Russia, the stories of the revered poet
Aleksandr Pushkin gained serious attention for the form. Somewhat like Mérimée
in France (who was one of the first to translate Pushkin into French), Pushkin
cultivated a detached, rather classical style for his stories of emotional conflicts
(“The Queen of Spades,” 1834). Also very popular and respected was Mikhail
Lermontov’s “novel,” A Hero of Our Time (1840), which actually consists of five
stories that are more or less related.
.

Q.2 What are the major themes in the short story My Son the Fanatic
by Hanif Kureshie
“My Son the Fanatic” by Hanif Kureshi

Hanif Kureishi, My Son the Fanatic (Critical Quarterly vol. 37, no.1), 62.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HANIF KURESHI was born in South London to a Pakistani father and
an English mother (Audrey Buss). His father, Rafiushan, was from a
wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after
the Partition of British India in 1947. After his parents married, the family settled
in Bromley where Kureishi was born.

THEMES
Themes 1: Generational tensions
Throughout the story Parvez emerges as a sympathetic figure because his attempts
to understand his son’s new found faith are met with confrontation. For instance,
when Parvez takes his son out to dinner, Ali immediately goes on the defensive,
questioning: “Don’t you know it’s wrong to drink alcohol?” (61) In this scene the
roles of parent and child seem to be reversed, with Ali scolding, criticizing and
lecturing Parvez on what he sees as Parvez’s immoral life style. However, Parvez
isunwilling to allow his son to dominate him. Parvez says “he wouldn’t stand for
his own son telling him the difference between right and wrong.” (62)Suggestion:
compare the theme of generational tensions in Kureshi’s “My Son the Fanatic”
with Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde.
Theme 2: Culture Clashes
In a conversation between Parvez and his son, Ali, Parvez says: “‘I love
England….They let you do almost anything here.” Ali, replies: “That is the
problem”. (62) For Ali that is the problem; he believes his father has sold out on
his culture for the West. Thus, while Parvez has adopted an Anglo- Pakistani,
hybrid culture, which is more concerned with the values of his adopted country,
and with Ali reverting back to Parvez’s original culture, there emerges a kind of
‘culture clash’ between father and son. This is seen when Ali talks about how, “the
skin of the infidel would burn off…” (62) and Parvez looks “out of the window as
if to check that they were still in London.” (62) There views seem incompatible;
Parvez cannot believe that these words are coming from his own son (62).
Theme 3: Identity
Ali says: “‘[m]y people have taken enough. If the persecution doesn’t stop, there
will be jihad...’” (62) Ali is using typical Islamic fundamentalist rhetoric, and here
Ali says “My people” and not “our people”, which shows that he sees his father as
part of the West, since he accuses, “you’re too implicated in Western society”. (61)
Ali, on the other hand identifies with the ‘East’, thus with Parvez symbolizing the
West and Ali symbolizing the East, Kureishi creates binaries which, although polar
opposites on the map, are situated within Britain.

Q.3 What are the major literary characteristics of the story The Property of
Woman by Sara Suleri

The Property of Woman by Sara Suleri

The day I found out that Sara Suleri is the daughter of ZA Suleri, it immediately formed an
unfavorable stereotype. This was unfortunate as I now see she’s been writing quite a bit. My
engrained bias against just about anything right-wing can often hinder the ability to appreciate
even the literary merits of right-wing themes and writers (religious-oriented, traditional,
orthodox – basically people on preservatives), much less a scholar or intellectual and sometimes
even economists!!

I realized this grossly unjust behavior of mine after reading Isaac Beshevis Singer, a Nobel Prize
winner, who wrote about the Jewish people and their religious themes (whatever they may be).
After reading him, it became quite clear to me that I had in my mind a mental obsession against
religion as it at heart differentiated people. I’d let me professor know too. He seemed
understanding but slightly confounded at seeing a good author rejected out-of-hand and with
such viciousness. Even if Singer’s message was ‘universal’, I still couldn’t get myself to accept it
as it was being presented with what I saw as strong doses of exclusivism.

ZA Suleri was much the Pakistani equivalent of a blinded flag-waving Republican ‘patriot’. He
was slightly more too. For him, everything stemmed from the Muslim League. Pakistan was the
Muslim League. Every article of his I’d read would indulge in the perpetuation of this gross
equivalence.
So as I was reading Sara Suleri’s very very confusing language while she wrecked havoc with
layers of incongruous metaphors, I was prepared (armed with a frown no less!) to debase any of
her comments on Pakistan (or Lahore) as a reflection of her probable indoctrination by her
heavily indoctrinated father. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in not being able to locate the bias
in her story. Instances which could have been represented weren’t dwelled upon long enough nor
was there enough to offer to indict her with the crime.

Anyway, as far as the story goes, it was poorly written. If I sleep on it, I may realize that my
mind is in far too slow to grasp the ‘higher art’ of the tale. But it seems by and large an
impossibility (the tale’s higher substance that is, not the shedding of my mental stupor).

I still don’t understand who Pathar Nadi is. The cicado apparently had some role to play though it
seemed a forced reference. Halima, the servant, sounded like a character with potential – but she
was woefully submerged by the dullness of the first-person narrative who spent too much time in
trifle talk – perhaps a reflection of the Gulberg 5 elite? Perhaps.

Thoughts: Halima’s tale indicates some infidelity perhaps. Her son, Allah Rakha’s origins are
questioned. Unknown. Pathar Nadi – the sunlight – telling the story limb by limb – Lahore’s
history – Pathar Nadi coming down to Lahore from Afghanistan, his journey through the Khyber
Pass, Peshawar, Wah, Potohar region, Jehlum, and into Lahore – Lahore’s weather, fruits, jamun,
falsay…what’s the link with all these? Time to dwell on them…

Like Rushdie in Shame, Suleri also struggles with the displacement caused by migration. Writing
out of New Haven, she feels compelled to depict (and sometimes justify) her complex
relationship to Pakistan.
With a Welsh mother and a Pakistani father, she probably experienced identity problems while
living in both Britain and Pakistan. She spent most of her childhood days in Pakistan and
consequently developed a distaste for a history "synonymous with grief and always most at home
in the attitudes of grieving." (Meatless Days ) Suleri eventually flees, feeling "supped full of
history, hungry for flavors less stringent on [her] palate, less demanding of [her] loyalty." Thus
she begins to float, rootless and rambling, never quite finding a spatial reality. She finds herself
"rarely able to lay hands on the shape of a city, or intuit north from south in any given continent,
its up from its down." Her eccentric friend Mustakor (herself a compulsive wanderer) warns in a
telegram, "IT WASTES THE YEARS YOU WANDER." When her brother Shahid tells her, "We
are lost, Sara" on phone from England after a brief return visit to Pakistan, she must agree. Far
removed from Pakistan -from its history, its memories, its turmoil -- she (dis)places herself
in America. Because of the autobiographical nature of Meatless Days, Suleri does not need to
transfer her experiences onto detached, fabricated characters as Rushdie does. She simply writes
about her family.
A Welsh woman trying to reconcile her race with her Pakistani existence, Suleri's mother typifies
the displacement that arises when one settles in a foreign land. In a nation still "learning to feel
unenslaved," she, with her white skin, represents a colonial past thatPakistan was so eager to
forget. Describing her mother's "repudiation of race [which] gave her a disembodied
Englishness," Suleri recognizes the scope of her mother's hardship: "She learned to live apart,
then -- apart from even herself - growing into that curiously powerful disinterest in owning, in
belonging, which years later would make her so clearly tell her children, ‘Child, I will not grip.'
She let commitment and belonging become my father's domain, learning instead the way of
walking with tact on other people's land." Suleri's mother, aware that she can no longer hold
onto her own history yet resigned to the fact that she may never regain any semblance of it at all,
does not have to ability to plant herself on the ground, to grow a new set of roots. As a migrant
that has "floated upwards from history, from memory, from Time," (Shame ) she has nothing
substantial enough to "grip." For her, Pakistan remains intangible.
Conversely, Suleri's sister Ifat devotes herself to Pakistan. Perhaps shame for her light skin
compels her to marry Javed, a dark, a polo-playing Pakistani. She learns to speak Punjabi and
even masters the Jehlum dialect. She takes pains to educate herself in the army's history and the
customs of Javed's ancestral village. Ifat denies displacement and becomes Pakistan.
Although not part of the family, Suleri's eclectic friend Mustakor appears as yet another figure
displaced by migration. Having lived in various places -East Africa, Britain, America --
Mustakor comically acquires just as many names -- Congo Lise, Faze Mackaw, Fancy Musgrave.
Acting in plays with Sara, she attempts to create realities for herself, forming "a deep allegiance
to the principle of radical separation: mind and body, existence and performance, would never be
allowed to occupy the same space of time." Because of her inability to settle and her drifting
interests, Mustakor fails to create an identity for herself away from the stage and other forms of
fanfare. She remains deprived of history, bereft of roots.
Migration, the act of moving from one place to another, instigates displacement, for it involves
more than just the abandonment of physical land. A migrant must relinquish his past and
dismantle his notion of history in order to face what he encounters in the present, namely the
"brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging." This, however, proves to be rather
difficult, for how can anyone simply forget history and disregard memory? How can anyone
ignore the pain that ensues after his roots have been severed, roots that had once firmly wedded
him to familiar ground? Furthermore, how does it feel to be rootless?
Displacement, unfortunately, rarely has a definitive terminus, for it seems to perpetuate itself.
The displaced often suffer from an almost-pathological wanderlust. Successive migrations
prevent the formation of tenacious roots and disregard the laws of gravity. Continually roaming
and shifting, migrants simply float, incapable of being attached to something so palpable as land.
This freedom, however, becomes a burden, almost like Kundera's "unbearable lightness of
being." The displaced yearn for placement, a self-defeating cause, which now "strain[s] and
heave[s] against [their] now obsolete need for steady location." (Meatless Days)
Common to both Rushdie and Suleri is Pakistan, perhaps the saddest, bloodiest migration of all
-- the displacement of a nation. Migration requires one to relinquish the past in order to survive
in the present. But how can anyone simply forget history? Perhaps this is what Pakistan
attempted to do, and perhaps this is why things went wrong. Freshly partitioned and eager to rid
itself of Indian domination, Pakistan wanted to erase centuries of history and forget its Indian
heritage. What Pakistan failed to realize, however, was that it had been India just moments ago,
and only now had the freedom of giving itself a new name. Stumbling, searching, shifting --
Pakistan took on the unfathomable task of rewriting history.

Q.4 Critically evaluate the story The Woman Who Had Imagination by
H.E.Bates.
Top of Form

The Woman Who Had, H.E. Bates's fourth volume of stories, first published in 1934 (Jonathan
Cape), is a fascinating collection of contrasts. The stories combine elements of realism and
poetry, beauty and ugliness, tenderness and irony. Graham Greene, writing in the Spectator,
lauded the collection as 'the first volume of Mr. Bates's maturity' and Bates as 'an artist of
magnificent originality with a vitality quite unsuspected hitherto'.
This is brilliantly demonstrated in the title story, 'The Woman Who Had Imagination', the heart-
rending story of an Italian woman, revealed through the casual meetings and conversations that
take place on a day's outing of a country choir.
The contrast between 'The Waterfall', with its melancholy and grace, and the disturbing tensions
in 'The Brothers', emphasises Bates's mastery of both the delicate and the disquieting. It is also in
this collection that we are introduced to the much-loved comic narrator, Uncle Silas, in 'The
Lily', 'The Wedding' and 'Death of Uncle Silas.'
In addition to the original collection this edition includes two extra stories. 'The Country
Doctor' concerns a woman's grief on the death of her dearest friend. It was first published in
the Fortnightly Review in 1931 with the title 'The Country Sale', and later in the limited
edition The Story Without an End and The Country Doctor (White Owl Press, 1932), and has not
been reprinted since.
'The Parrot' chronicles a man, a marriage and the eponymous parrot, and has only previously
been published in 1928 in T.P.'s Weekly, founded by the radical MP, T.P. O'Connor."The Woman
Who Had Imagination."A village choir travels to a country estate for a music festival, where the
young son of the choir director is drawn to a resident of the estate, a mesmerizing and mysterious
young woman. Only on the return trip does he learn that she is married to the aged don of the
house; as one choir member exclaims, "it needed a bit of imagination to marry that old cock."The
many details of the choir outing may reflect in some respects Bates's own youth, as his father
Albert Bates was a passionate singer and choir director (The Vanished World 29). Graham
Greene, reviewing the collection first containing the story (attached), wrote that "I cannot enough
admire the title story...The dresses and slang...the heat of the afternoon striking up into the
crowded brake from the country road, the return at night...these frame, in the setting of the
country house, an odd romantic episode. But the sureness of Mr. Bates's tact is seen in this: the
unusual...is kept in its place and is not allowed to do more than to throw into relief the lovely
realism of the choir's outing." In The Woman Who Had Imagination and Other
Stories (1934), Country Tales (1938), Country Tales (1940). Reprinted in Modern English Short
Stories (London: Oxford, 1956)

‘The Woman Who Had Imagination & Other Stories’, published in February 1934, was Bates’s
fourth collection of short stories, and, taken as a group, they display considerable variety: rural
pieces, tales of children and old folk, urban stories, an autobiographical item, and two
psychological studies. Several leading critics noted that the stories indicated a maturity that had
not been so evident in previous tales. The full list of contents: the title story, plus The Lily, The
Story Without an End, The Gleaner, Time, A German Idyll, For the Dead, The Wedding, The
Waterfall, Innocence, Millennium Also Ran, Sally Go Round the Moon, The Brothers, and Death
of Uncle Silas.

Q.5.Edgor Allan Poe reveals the psychological disturbances in his short

stories.
The human mind is one of the most complex structures that God has created. It is
difficult to understand eachbrain process as every human being possesses his/her own
distinguished thought patterns with different levels of complexities. A person’s mind greatly
influences his behavior, which eventually transforms into his habit by becoming embedded into
his character. Today, the world of psychology tries to understand everything that a mindcan
create. However, even before the field of Psychology was introduced and brought into practice,
some American writers threw a spotlight on the mechanism of the human brain in their works.
On top of this list is an American writer, Edgar Allan Poe, who seems to be keenly aware of the
complexities of the human brain and its effects on human behavior. His understanding of the
human mind is marked in his various short stories, such as “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of
Amontillado,” and “Berenice.” In these pieces of literature, Edgar Allan Poe presents
protagonists who are the victims of complex mind issues such as guilt, perversity, superstitions,
revenge, reverse psychology,schizophrenia, etc.

Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat” portrays three main psychological aspects of the
human mind thatinclude irrationality, perversity, and guilt. From the beginning of the story, it is
clearly understood that the main character is superstitious. He recalls his wife’s words as “my
wife,…, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as
witches in disguise” (Poe 1).The character calls his wife superstitious, but as the story proceeds,
it can be seen that he is far more superstitious himself. According to Junfeng and Haiyum, “We
become increasingly aware of his superstitious belief from the fact that he calls his cat, Pluto,
who in Greek and Roman mythology was the god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld”
(326). Moreover, the character begins to believe in the reincarnation of the black cat. Upon
seeing the second cat, he quickly brings into mind the appearance of Pluto and how both cats
resemble. Poe says, “It was a black cat- a very large one- fully as large as Pluto, and closely
resembling him in every respect but one” (3). His mind is full of these irrational beliefs that
scare him and lead him to the hatred of the second cat and the murder of his beloved wife. He
states, “…, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from doing so, partly
it at by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly-- let me confess it at once-- by absolute dread
of the beast” (4). Therefore, the superstition in the mind of the main character is his primary
reason for killing the second cat.

In addition to this, Poe, in “The Black Cat” expresses “the spirit of perverseness” through
his main character. Perverseness can be characterized asa conscious persistency in doing wrong,
even to the loved ones. This condition is always followed by guilt, which is another
psychological aspect of the story. Poe explains in a very clear way of how perverseness deepens
its roots in the human mind and becomes a part of it. For example, the main character is shown
as a very gentle and loving person who is fond of animals. What happens to him throughout the
story? If the story is not read analytically, the reader can say that his aggressiveness is due to his
consumption of alcohol; consequently,making him a violent murderer.Furthermore, if it is read
with deeper exploration, the cause of his violence comes out to behis perverseness. He, himself,
says, “this spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow…- to offer violence to its
own nature- to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only- that urged me to continue and finally to
consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.” Poe describes perverseness
as “the primitive impulses of the human heart,…, which give direction to the character of
Man”(2). Psychologists describe impulses as aradical imbalance of behavior and an original sin
of the theologians, but Poe puts a much vivid light on it. He explains that once an idea or impulse
hits the mind of a person, he cannot resist from acting upon it. He becomes helpless and is forced
to listen to his thoughts (Junfeng 327). In doing so, a person becomes furious if he is unable to
satisfy these impulses. In such a situation, his aggressiveness can reach the maximum peak. In
the story, when the main character lifts his axe to kill the second cat, his wife stops him. As a
result, Poe writes, “Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew
my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain” (4). Hence, the main character becomes
incapable offreeing his soul from the urge of doing wrong.

Furthermore, guilt is another psychological traitof the human brain thatcan lead someone
into becoming either an angel or a devil. In “The Black Cat,” there are many instances where
guilt can be seen to take over the main character’s personality. Unfortunately, this guilt does not
prevent him from continuing his bad deeds. The main character changes from a pleasant person
to a wild one who drinks, curses, and beats his wife and pets. Therefore, his pets start to avoid
him as he says, “I fancied that the cat avoided my presence”(Poe 2). As a result, he becomes
more irritated when he is ignored asit makes him feel the guiltof being aggressive to the ones he
loves. In his guilt, he cuts out the eye of his favorite Pluto. Also, he hangs the cat for no rational
reason, but because of the guilt he has of doing wrong. Moreover, after he brings the second cat
home, he starts to hate it because it reminds him of what he has done in his past. Poe states,
“What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery,…, that, like Pluto, it also
had been deprived of one of its eyes” (3). Similarly, the feeling of guilt converts this hatred into
an attempt of murder of the second cat. People often try to hide their guilt from themselves as
well as from people around them. Likewise, the main character drinks even more to hide his
deeds from his own self as he states “…soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed” (Poe 2).
After murdering his wife, he tries to hide his action from the rest of the world by walling her up
in the cellar. It is in the psyche of a person that when he is sure that he will not be suspected, the
sense of guilt vanishes from his brain for some time, but comes back now and then. The
murderer in the story says, “…and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into my
house, I soundly and transguilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!”
(Poe 5). Even more so, after walling his wife in the cellar, his guilt does not restrain him from
spilling out the truth of the murder before the cops. Poe mentions this as “In the rabid desire to
say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all” (5). Therefore, guilt is such a feature
of human mind that can come out to the surface at any moment.

Another story of Edgar Allan Poe that exhibits similar psychological issues is “The Cask
of Amontillado,” which is a complete description of revenge that arises from pride and jealousy.
Montresor, the protagonist, is so deeply drowned in the thought of taking revenge from Fortunato
that he does not even mention the exact reason behind his revenge. The concept of killing
someone only for one’s own pride and jealousy goes back to the time when the very first people
came to the earth. In her article, Renee states that when the thought of revenge develops in a
person’s brain, it drives him insane and does not allow him to give it a second thought (1). The
very first sentence of the short story, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best
could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge,” clearly describes the whole theme of
the story as a deeply enrooted revenge in Montresor’s mind (Poe 743). Moreover, the
motivational forces that drive revenge are pride and jealousy. Montresor is jealous of Fortunato,
thus; he proves him foolish a couple of times in the story as he says, “The man wore motley. He
had on a tight- fitting parti- striped dress and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and
bells” (744). Also, Montresor expresses superiority as he shows Fortunato a picture including a
snake being smashed by a human foot with the motto, “No one attacks me with impunity” (Poe
746). Montresor thinks that Fortunato is the snake biting the human foot because Fortunato
insults him.In addition, he considers the foot killing the snake as himself. Hence, Montresor has
a conflicting mind; he is unsure whether the revenge is for the insult of his pride or due to his
jealousy towards Fortunato.
 Additionally, Poe explores the human mind and extracts the concept of reverse
psychology. Poe, at a couple of times in the story, shows how a person can gain something from
someone without even asking for it. An example of reverse psychology in “The Cask of
Amontillado” is when Montresor asks Fortunato to taste Amontillado, but at the same time says,
“…I will not impose upon you good nature. I perceive you have an engagement…” (Poe 744).
Similarly, when Fortunato coughs because of the nitre walls, Montresor uses reverse psychology
and says, “Come,… we will go back; your health is precious… We will go back; you will be ill
and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchresi -” (Poe 745). Montresor is aware of the
fact that Fortunato thinks he is the best when it comes to alcohol as Poe states, “He prided
himself upon his connoisseurship in wine,” still he uses another person’s name to urge him to
keepmoving. Accordingly, Poe is well aware of this psychological characteristic of the human
mind.

Correspondingly, Poe uses the concept of perversity and guilt in “The Cask of
Amontillado.” The cause of murdering Fortunato is not only revenge, but also a stronger feeling
that is described in “The Black Cat,” and that is perversity. There is an intense desire in
Montresor to harm Fortunato even though he has not done any harm to him. Although Montresor
claims that he has been hurt many times by Fortunato, he cannot resist calling him “respected,
admired, beloved,” admitting his “good nature,” and also calling him “noble” (Little 212). These
words prove that Fortunato is a good person and the word “injuries” used in the first sentence of
the story is merely an exaggeration that Montresor’s psyche has created. Furthermore, perversity
does not come alone, but it brings with itself a sense of guilt. Even though Montresor thinks of
himself as the representative of his family for crashing down enemies, he feels guilty while
walling up Fortunato. For instance, his guilt surfaces when unknowingly he calls Fortunato
“noble” and says that “My heart grew sink…” (Poe 748). Despite emphasizing that his heart is
sinking because of the dampness of the catacombs, it is actually the guilt that is making his heart
sink (Little 212). Hence, Poe’s grasp of perverseness and guilt of the human mind is
recognizable.

Similarly, the fact of Poe’s understanding of human brain and its complexities has been
demonstrated in his short story “Berenice.” Lori Beth Griffin claims that “Poe’s Egaeus in
“Berenice” displays every sign of schizophrenia, and therefore is a proof of Poe’s particular
insight into this realm of psychology” (13). One of the major symptoms in a person possessing
Schizophrenia is memory problems. The protagonist of “Berenice,” Egaeus, is unable to recall
several serious events in his life. After seeing the box with dentist tools and teeth, he asks
himself, “I had done a deed – what was it?” Also, he cannot remember the incident of pulling
Berenice out of her grave and taking all her teeth out. Although his body reacts to his guilt as he
says “Why then, …, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body
become congealed within my veins,” Egaeus does not remember what he has just done a few
hours ago (Griffin 14).
 Moreover, obsession that is another sign of schizophrenia is displayed by Egaeus. He,
himself, admits that he has this disease, but refers to it as monomania. Egaeus says, “…a
pathological obsession with one idea; a fixed idea associated with paranoia.” His obsession in
hiswife’s (Berenice) teeth is clear from the lines, “The teeth!– the teeth!- they were here, and
there,and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white,
with the pale lips writhing about them” (Poe 143- 144). According to Yonjae Jung’s article,
“Poe’s Berenice,” Egaeus has always been obsessed with things throughout his childhood and
teenageyears, such as spending hours staring at the floor, flame of a lamp, or fire, nonetheless;
the obsession with Berenice’s teeth is far more than these daily routines (227). It is so because
this obsession does not let him bury Berenice’s beautiful set of teeth along with her. Therefore,
he becomes unable to restrain himself from savagely pulling each tooth out of his dead wife’s
mouth.
Moreover, Egaeus also shows the symptoms of hallucination, which is another indicator
of schizophrenia. Later on in the story, the reader finds out that Berenice is not dead, but is
suffering from a brain disorder, epilepsy, that makes her appear dead for hours. Even though she
is not dead while lying in the coffin, Egaeus’ hallucination makes him think, “… the peculiar
smell of the coffin sickened me, and I fancied a deleterious odor was already exhaling from the
body” (Poe 144). Moreover, he tries to ignore his hallucination when he sees Berenice’s finger
and jaw slightly moving (Griffin 13-14). Egaeus sees everything, yet he is unable to distinguish
between reality and imagination. Even more so, Poe has shown other symptoms of schizophrenia
in his protagonist. Poe mentions in “Berenice” that Egaeus lacks power and energy. He is
uninterested in the outside world and has isolated himself in his father’s mansion. Egaeus has
nofriends and social activities, and he passes his boyhood in reading books and spending hours
idlyin a corner. Also, depression that is an evident symptom of schizophrenia is endured by
Egaeus (Griffin 14-15). He describes himself as “… - I ill health and buried in gloom” (Poe 141).
Hence, Poe has created a protagonist who possesses almost all the signs of schizophrenia. He has
an outstanding idea of this psychological disorder.
To sum it up, Edgar Allan Poe is an American writer who has a thoroughunderstanding of
the human brain’s functions. He is aware of many psychological issues that were discovered a
long time after his death. He has an amazing knowledge of guilt, superstition, revenge, reverse
psychology, schizophrenias and many other psychological mattersofthe human mind. In his short
stories, he clearly demonstrates how human brain works and leaves an effect on the person’s
thoughts and behaviors, shaping the whole personality of the person. Overall, Poe had a strong
gripof the functioning of the human mind even before the word psychology was introduced.