The Superstitious Perverseness "The Black Cat"

From the Paper:

""The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe is a grotesque short story of a man's conscience. "The Black Cat combines several themes that fascinated Poe such as reincarnation, perversity, and retribution. This story also carried an implied theme in the superstitious implications of this man's downfall. In this story Poe keeps very strongly to the theme of perversity and superstitions to illustrate the strange conditions that led to the crimes of this "happy man" especially fond of animals" (Poe 103). The theme of superstition is found to be a background motivation to the events and actions performed in the story. Towards the beginning of the story it is first mentioned to us that his wife always tells him "all black cats [are] witches in disguise" (Poe 103). The narrator also mentions that the name of the cat was Pluto. Pluto in "Greek and Roman mythology was the god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld" (Womack 5). The use of this name leads the reader to believe that the cat is somehow responsible for the death that is caused by the narrator himself. This is where the reader is first introduced to the fact that the events of this story could be caused by some superstition and not coincidence alone."

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