The Black Cat and Dramatic Romance

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"The Black Cat" contains a main character, the narrator, who gradually succumbs to evil. The narrator conceals a repressed inner being of evil that is released by the presence of his two mysterious black cats. Throughout the story, Poe utilizes several literary devices to illustrate the narrator's immoral thoughts and actions attributable to his relations with these cats. Therefore, the literary characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" portray the elements of a Gothic romance.

Initially, the plot of "The Black Cat" parallels the plot of a typical Gothic romance. One of the distinct components of the Gothic romance plot that "The Black Cat" fulfills is the creation of the themes of dramatic mystery. H.R. Steeves describes dramatic mystery as containing the themes of "disappearance [. . . or] an unsolved crime" (252). Ann Radcliffe further adds that the destruction of the soul "either through a compact with the powers of evil or the commission of an inexplicable ...

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also a component of dramatic mystery. This crime originally remains unsolved for upon his wife's disappearance, the police arrive to make inquiries and investigate the narrator's home, but find nothing. Although the police "left no nook or cranny unexplored" they are still unsure whether the narrator has murdered his wife until the conclusion of the story (Poe 147). Before the narrator gouges out the cat's eye, he recounts the feeling of his soul taking flight from his body and a more than fiendish malevolence replacing it. At this point, the narrator's deteriorating conscience and destroyed soul are apparent. The narrator rationalizes that soul has always sought to vex itself. The ...

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