Edgar Allan Poe :: essays research papers

What Goes Around Comes Around In his taradiddle The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes his experience with madness, and challenges the readers open frame of disbelief by using mental imagery in describing the plotand characters. Poe uses prefiguration to describe the scenes of sanity versus insanity. Hewrites for the most wild yet unattractive narrative which I am most to pen, I neither deliver nor illicitbelief. Yet mad I am not- and surely do I not dream, alerts the reader about a forthcoming story thatwill test the boundaries of reality and fiction. The root asserts his belief of the activitiesdescribed in the story when he states to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul(80). Poe describes his doting temperament of his character when he writes my tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of mycompanions(80). He also characterizes his beast friends as unselfish and their love as self-sacrificingillustrating to the readers his devot ion to them for their companionship. The author usesforeshadowing in the statement we had birds, goldfish, a fine dog, a rabbit, a small monkey, and a cat(80).The use of italics hints to the reader of upcoming events about the cat that peaks interest andanticipation. Poe also describes a touch foreshadowing and abeyance of disbelief when he illustrateshis wives response to the cat when he writes all dour cats are witches in disguise, not thatshe was ever serious upon this point-and I book of facts the matter at all for no better reason than ithappened, but now, to be remembered(80). Poe expresses his early attachment to the cat and dramatizes the character changes he experiences when he writes our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years,during which my general temperament and character-through instrumentality of the daimonIntemperance-had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worsened(81). He warns thereader of new events in a cynical ve stige and implies the beginning of the madness he denies. Poe firstillustrates this madness when he uses imagery to describe the brutal scene with the catwhen he writes I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast bythe throat, and deliberately truncated one of its eyes from the socket The author describes his emotional and physical state of be during the unthinkable act as I blush, I burn, I shudder, succession I pen the damnable atrocity(81). He describes the