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Head: EDGAR ALLEN POE'S "THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO",
Edgar
Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado",
"The Black Cat"
and the "Tell Tale Heart"
[Author's Name]
[Institution's Name]
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado",
"The Black Cat" and the "Tell
Tale Heart"
Poe's
most logical representation of perversity resides in
his masterfully told account "The Black Cat."
That work's storyteller owns a black cat named Pluto,
which he exceedingly loves. Nevertheless, the cat's
owner takes to drinking, and one day, in a fit of temper,
he is detained by wicked impulses further than his control.
This is however the commencement of the narrator's sorrows.
He distinguishes that it
"…was
this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself--to
offer violence to 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. One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose
about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung
it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest
remorse at my heart; --hung it because I knew it had
loved me, and because I felt it had given me no offence;
--hung it because I knew that in doing so I was committing
a sin--a deadly sin that would jeopardize my immortal
soul as to place it--if such a thing were possible--even
beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful
and Most Terrible God." (Poe, 225)
Poe
makes use of verbal communication that can propel a
conventional moralist howling in relation to the wages
of sin. In that work, Poe depicted God as apparent in
the works of his own conception. Speaking throughout
his narrators, Poe demonstrates perversity as the "germ"
of obliteration as it resides in the human consciousness.
The night of the day he hanged Pluto, a fire brushed
through the narrator's house. Upon visiting the damage,
the storyteller witnessed in the standing wall, "as
if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the
figure of a gigantic cat...There was a rope about the
animal's neck." (Poe, 66) The picture of the cat
detailed in what had been a recently plastered wall
overpoweringly impinges on the fancies of the narrator.
As if to atone for his actions, the narrator begins
a look for to take on a like cat, which he lastly locates
"in a den of more than infamy...reposing on the
head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum."
The nervousness grows to detestation, caused in part
by the narrator's unearthing that, similar to Pluto,
the new cat has been deprived of an eye.
In
conclusion, one day as the storyteller and his wife
go down the steps into their cellar, the cat causes
the narrator to lose his balance. In turn, the narrator
flies into a temper and tries to axe the cat. The wife,
trying to save the life of the cat, catches hold of
the axe. Then completely out of his mind, the narrator
plants the axe in her skull. To steer clear of uncovering
in his transgression, he bricks his wife into a basement
wall. Nevertheless the unfortunate narrator unintentionally
bricks the cat into the wall additionally. Following
searching for the dreaded cat, the narrator concludes
that the beast has "in terror, fled the premises
forever." On the other hand, the fourth day, the
police get there to meticulously examine the house.
(Poe, 60) Bye the bye, gentleman, this--this is a very
well constructed house." "The Black Cat"
illustrates many expressions and vehicles that the perverse
can presuppose. First the narrator gives way to alcohol;
then the narrator's character of perversity, given a
foothold in his psyche, causes the ultimate turn down
in his personality. As the story progresses, the narrator
reaches the point which Poe describes: "With certain
minds, under certain conditions, it [perversity] becomes
absolutely irresistible...radical...primitive...."
(Poe, 272) Unfortunately, the wretched narrator cannot
help himself.
"As
mentioned previously, a traditional moralist will always
be tempted to overlay his own principles on Poe's tales,
in this story, expostulating the evils of drink, perhaps.
And understandably, when such tenets reside at the core
of one's belief structure, the temptation to perform
moral judgment can be preemptory yet Poe's system of
mind deserves our efforts to comprehend his system"
(Silverman).
In
Poe's fiction morality is the anxiety played out involving
the forceful, creative vitality of his narrators and
the perverse, betraying, impulse to self-ruination.
When a character commits evil in Poe, he has not desecrated
God; he has despoiled his own spirit. Regret in Poe
is spoken by the conscience, perhaps the author's slightest
understood disquisition. Conscience speaks in the conclusions
of "The Imp of the Perverse," "The Black
Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado","
"William Wilson," and "Berenice."
So what is conscience in Poe? It is the disloyalty of
the self in deepest end result, Poe's most commanding
driving force of the perverse. Conscience reveals the
unfathomable secret. It is the "Telltale heart"
that marks the downfall of many of Poe's narrators.
Even when the heart will not tell, as in "The Man
of the Crowd," the man is still devastated by the
burden of conscience. "What is conscience, after
all, but that part of the ego which regards the rest
as an object which it can judge" (Hoffman 212);
and in judging, what can conscience correspond to if
not the imp of the perverse, this same characteristic
of ego.
In keeping with Poe, people destroy their lives because
of impulses away from their control. Poe would say that
sin is for all time committed in opposition to the self,
and that the commission of sin cannot all the time be
resisted for the reason that the perverse desire is
original.
References
Hoffman,
Daniel. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc.,
1972. June 8, 2002
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar
Allan Poe. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co.,
Inc., 1966.June 8, 2002. P. 60-272
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending
Remembrance. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
June 8, 2002
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