Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’ illustrates the downward spiral of a well-natured man into a mentally broken, immoral character who harms his cat and eventually murders his wife; these despicable actions lead to his conviction, emanating from his drowning in Freudian wishful impulses and repressions.
The narrator’s drinking degrades his character at his pets’ expense. Pluto, his cat, was saved from this abuse by the narrator’s self-restraint, though eventually Pluto was abused as well. This passage illustrates the dynamic between the narrator’s urge to harm Pluto, and his affection for the cat:
“Our friendship lasted… for several years, during which my general temperament and character — through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse… My pets… were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him… But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is like Alcohol ! — and at length even Pluto… began to experience the effects of my ill temper” (Poe).
The narrator’s restraint in this passage is a Freudian repression, the act of resisting an inappropriate desire (Freud 2212). The narrator’s restraint was his friendship with Pluto, restraining him from hurting Pluto, a desire developed due to the narrator’s intemperance. This desire is a Freudian wishful impulse, which was “… in sharp contrast to the subject’s other wishes and … proved incompatible with the ethical … standards of his personality” (Freud 2212). In this case, the wish was to hurt Pluto, which was incompatible with his friendship with the cat. This wish is eventually fulfilled though, when after a night of drinking, the narrator takes out Pluto’s eye after being annoyed by him (Poe).
Eventually, the dynamic between the narrator’s wish and his repression breaks, setting course for him to lose his moral grounding. This passage shows the narrator’s shift in perspective between drunkenly hurting Pluto, to committing to hanging Pluto:
“…Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself … — to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only — that urged me to … consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning … I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so 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 … God” (Poe),
When the narrator removed Pluto’s eye, it was in a heated, drunken moment (Poe). In contrast, the hanging was thought-out; its consequences weighed; he describes this crime as “jeopardizing [his] immortal soul…beyond the reach of…God” (Poe). Without a doubt, the narrator conscientiously hanging Pluto while acknowledging its gravity, exhibits a willful immorality the narrator adopts; this action was committed for the purpose of doing “wrong for wrong’s sake only” (Poe). This shift in the narrator’s perspective caused the transition from drunken to deliberate crime -resulting from acting on his wishful impulse- translates as the downward slope of his morals.
Consequently, the narrator’s broken restraint against hurting Pluto makes him even more impulsive, accumulating to him killing his wife and entering a brief period of insanity, leading to his conviction. The narrator’s repression acted as gatekeeping of his morals and sanity, until he removed Pluto’s eye in his drunken state. Before hurting Pluto, the narrator’s impulse was based on irritability- but with no manifestation of his impulse, it was easier to repress. After hurting Pluto, the narrator’s impulse was strengthened by a desire to “consummate the injury”, and since he already harmed Pluto once, it was easier for him to reenact his impulse and end the cat’s life. This second enactment of his impulse indicates that his mental gatekeeping was breached. Resultedly, the narrator becomes unhinged and morally parched, thus more impulsive. Upon experiencing a split-second impulse to bring the axe down on his wife, the narrator did not restrain himself, nor was he remorseful of this murder (Poe). Further, the methodical manner whereby he hid his wife’s corpse and his pride in accomplishing that task exhibits a developed apathy to evil within him (Poe). This psychotic development affected his mental state- during a police investigation of his basement, the narrator was overcome with deliriousness, and knocked down the wall wherein his wife’s corpse lay. This episode led to the narrator’s incarceration (Poe), hence the contingency between the narrator losing his self-restraint and his conviction.
Albeit the alter-ego Poe’s narrator becomes, due to his intemperance, can be analyzed in relation to psychical traumas from the narrator’s youth; a psychoanalysis of his adulthood also explains this alter-ego. The narrator’s ill-fated journey from alcoholic to felon, due to the fermentation of his mind, develops a tough dynamic between his desire to hurt Pluto and the resistance of their friendship; these are Freudian wishful impulse and repression. Losing the battle against his wishful impulses, the narrator becomes indifferent to heinous acts, from hanging Pluto, to murdering his wife- which ultimately leads to his conviction. Provided that Poe successfully invokes a cathartic exploration of human capacity for evil through the narrator, a question arises: to what extent can this evil be summoned within each of us?
