The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.
This poem was one of Edgar Allan Poe’s storylines that are more macabre. Poe possessed a great talent for poetry and short stories. He had such a dark soul for writing stories such as “the Black Cat.” This reader felt horror at the mistreatment of any animal. The man in this story was a horrible specimen of humanity who made a choice to abuse an animal and murder his wife. All his actions came with consequences and the man paid for it in the end.
Poe’s own life had features of horror. It was one thing Poe knew about, and that was a tragedy. Much of his writings have a thread of facts that haunted him throughout his life. Both his parents died when he was but three years old. His foster parents sent him to the best schools, but Poe’s bad habits got the best of his foster parents, and they refused to pay for his schooling. Poe used his dark talent to perfect the American Horror story by placing great focus on structure and style. He worked as a poet, editor, and critic in his short life. Though afflicted by alcoholism and depression many of his works looked at the dark and guilty side of life. This story was one of the best specimens of in American horror literature.
Poe tells this story in the first person as someone who is supposedly dying. This man wishes to confess his sins of animal cruelty, and the murder of his wife. A hardened alcoholic who became quite mean when drinking and brutalized the cat and in the end hung it from a tree in the front yard.

The story takes a real dark turn when another black cat haunts the man (Poe,4). In a rage, he tries to kill the cat but ends up killing his wife. There is a horror theme, which proves humans turn mean when binge drinking that sets a fine line in love and hate and a heavy dose of fear and guilt.
This story by Poe is classic in design when anger and guilt go hand in hand and when one forgets about what is right and what is very morally wrong. Guilt and fear can cause humans to lose that moral compass. It can haunt dreams and distort reality. This story proves that theory because reprehensible actions had a nasty way of coming back to haunt humans in a terrifying sense of karma. Poe was a master of the macabre and wrote with a theme possibly based on his own life. Even Poe’s death was surrounded by mystery and horror (Poe, 1). Someone found an unconscious Poe in an alley, and he dies four days later. It was a mysterious ending for a man who wrote lavishly about the genre of horror and the consequences of the dark side of human behavior.
It is the difference between heaven and hell and one’s conscious. Poe was a gifted writer and one could see this masterful talent in many of his writings. He had a way of capturing the reader’s interest and keeping it until the very end. When the story is good, the reader will not be able to put the story down until they reach the very last page. The horror of animal cruelty and murder are themes that still resonate today. Many authors try to emulate Poe’s horror genre because they know there is an audience out there that identifies with the storyline. Themes with guilt and fear just work in the horror genre. It gets even better when the author adds the paranormal, and a hot love affair and the reader gets sucked into the atmosphere, and the fun and terror begins.
Works Cited
American Academy of Poets Biography of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 Web 18 November 2016
Poe, Edgar Allan, the Black Cat 1843