.." (Poe, E.A.)
This perversity in human nature causes the narrator to hang the cat - an act of unbridled cruelty and brutality which has no rational explanation except that the potential for such action lies hidden within human nature.

The rest of the story follows the pattern of retribution for the sins of the man. After the killing of Pluto the house burns down, leaving only one wall in which the cat has somehow strangely become embedded. There is no easy explanation for this event and it emphasizes the supernatural aspect of the story.

The main character returns to his drinking habits and one evening while drinking he sees a cat similar to Pluto. There are remnants of guilt and human conscience in the man and he takes the cat home with him. However, he starts to hate and fear the cat and there is a suggestion that guilt plays a large…...

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Bibliography

Poe, E.A. The Black Cat. October 24, 2006. http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/blackcat.html

Discussion

Poe constructed the story in a way that the narrator seems to be already in his sane mind while telling his experiences of domestic violence. Sane but not very sane still; this is how a reader may think once he re-reads the first paragraph on how he describes his experiences.

In their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --have destroyed me...To me, they have presented little but Horror --to many they will seem less terrible than baroques."

The events in the story, particularly the cutting of the cat's one eye, the killing of the cat, and the killing of the narrator's wife, are all horrible deeds. And yet, as the narrator introduces his story, he considered that all his deeds have presented him with little horror -- an instance that may cause a reader think that only a person with insane mind will not be greatly affected by such horror.

The narrator's…...

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Bibliography

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Black Cat. http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/blackcat.html

"
But whoops, from inside the wall that he had so carefully reconstructed to hide his evil deed, came a "cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell..."

So what the reader now is seeing and feeling is well, you wild crazy person, you are being paid back for your sins; your karma has come back to haunt you, insane soul that you are. And then, of course, more police arrived and they tore the bricks away and now Poe enjoys sharing with the reader the gory details of the rotting body. "The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators." On the…...

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Works Cited

Colton, George. "Poe's Tales." The American Review, 2.3 (1845): 306-09. (Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism Vol. 16).

Smith, William Henry. "Tales, by Edgar Allan Poe." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 52.385

1847): 582-87. (Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 1).

The narrator may have actually wanted to be able to express his caring side more openly but was not allowed to do so by the society. He had to suppress his love for human beings and in doing so, he transferred the same feelings to animals. obert B. Ewen calls it ego defense mechanism, "whereby feelings or behaviors are transferred, usually unconsciously, from one object to another that is less threatening" (29)
The narrator is so used to being rejected by the society that when Pluto, the Black Cat, offers his unconditional love, the narrator becomes intensely jealous and possessive. In a fit of anger and on detecting a slight hint of withdrawal, the narrator goes on to injure Pluto, after "fanc[ying] that the cat avoided [his] presence" (851). And eventually kills it. Then a second cat appears. This cat becomes the object of narrator's affection initially as he declared…...

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References

Amper, Susan. "Untold Story: The Lying Narrator in 'The Black Cat.'" Studies in Short Fiction 29 (1992): 475-85.

Ewen, Robert B. An Introduction to Theories of Personality. 2nd ed. Orlando: Academic Press, 1984.

Gargano, James W. "The Black Cat': Perverseness Reconsidered." Texas Studies in Language and Literature 2 (1960): 172-78.

Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.

He also tries to cover up his crime when questioned by the police, but his shame and guilt over killing
his wife gets the best of him, thus leading to his confession of murder.
Poe's use of grotesque images and very descriptive narration is best
exemplified in "The Masque of the Red Death," published in 1842 which
concerns Prince Prospero and his court in an unidentified location
somewhere in Central Europe or perhaps Italy. Many scholars consider this
tale as Poe's masterpiece, for it illustrates his supreme artistry as one
of the literary giants of American literature in the 19th century. In this
tale, the plot revolves around the supernatural, but the main events are
based on historical truth. His "Red Death" as it appears in the title is
not related to the "lack Death," a form of plague that killed millions of
people during the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe, but is a metaphor for
consumption, also known as tuberculosis,…...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poe, Edgar Allan. 50 Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Random House,

1998.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, we are told, with the implication that those brought together by the vagaries of politics would be best kept apart. But sometimes this is not true at all. In the case of the Black Seminoles, politics brought slaves and Seminole Indians politics brought together two groups of people who would - had the history of the South been written just a little bit differently - would never have had much in common. But slaves fleeing their masters and Seminoles trying to lay claim to what was left of their traditional lands and ways found each other to be natural allies in Florida and in time in other places as well. This paper examines the origin of this particular American population, describing how the Black Seminoles changed over time and how their culture reflected both African and Seminole elements.
The Black Seminoles began in the early 1800s in…...

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Works Cited

Amos, Alcione M., and Thomas Senter (eds). The Black Seminoles. History of a Freedom-Seeking People. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1996.

Hancock, I. The Texas Seminoles and Their Language. Austin: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1980.    http://www.nps.gov/foda/Fort_Davis_WEB_PAGE/About_the_Fort/Seminole.htm http://members.aol.com/angelaw859/movement.html 

 http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/library/News/seminoles2.html 

Jahoda, G. The Trail of Tears. Kansas City: Wings Press, 1995.

Claire
The Cat in "Claire"

"Claire" by Steven Barthelme is a story about a man who has lost the love of his life, Claire, mainly because of an addiction to gambling. Although the couple has parted, and Claire intends to marry someone else, they still love each other and have remained friends. Bailey often borrows money from her to support his habit, and the reader gets the feeling in the opening of the story that Bailey is going from bad to worse and getting seedier. The cat appears like a signal that something is about to change. The cat represents Bailey himself and the condition of his consciousness. This can be seen in the cat's neediness, opportunism, or good luck, and basic likeableness.

That the cat is needy, like Bailey is needy, is clear at the moment it enters the story: "The cat watched him. Bailey reached carefully in over its head…...

Criminal Smehra
lack Tar Heroin Dealer

I am sitting in my ex-roommate's living room. The television casts the only light in the room. It dances on the coffee table and upon our faces; a dull placid light from some meaningless rerun on Nick at Nite. Sharon gets up from the sofa, murmuring something about popcorn and her 'stupid' boyfriend, Tony. They've been together for 4 weeks now, that's why she's my ex-roommate, and in a nutshell: I don't like him. Not because he took my roommate away -she still pays for her room there- and not because he greases back his hair with half a jar of rylcreem everyday I don't like Tony because he's scum. He's the kind of scum you tend to pull up your coat to avoid their stares penetrating the back of your neck as you walk past them on the street. The kind of scum who has…...

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Bibliography

Cooper, M.H. "Competition in the Heroin Industry"

The Business of Drugs

Washington DC Congressional Quarterly, 1990

Black Tar Heroin

In addition, the human pronoun "her" is used to refer to the mother penguin, while "it" would have been a more appropriate choice if the author wanted to reinforce the penguins' animal aspects (BBC 3, 8). hile the author does use the term "chick" throughout the book, mixing it with the human-like terms further allow the child reader to grasp the non-fiction elements of the book while still remaining interested and emotionally involved in the story. Evoking sadness in the reader, a photograph shows the mother walking away from her baby. Through the use of these words and illustrations, the fact that the penguins are animals living in a natural home is emphasized, while children are still engaged through the mild human-like qualities that are ascribed to the animals (BBC 3-4).
Thus, a comparison of the personification used in The Cat and the Hat and in Baby Penguins yields great…...

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Works Cited

BBC. Baby Penguins. New York, Scholastic, 2009.

Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat. New York: Random House, 1957.

Lastly the point of engendering the idea that alcoholism and in short inappropriate decadence ruled the day is the description of the isolation environement; "There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, 3 there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. ithout was the 'Red Death.'"
The Black Cat is a slightly more plebian story, about a man who had a particular affinity for pets and who adopted many and shared this love with his patient and loving wife. The man developed severe alcoholism and his entire demeanor changed, as he went about cruelly attacking verbally and physically all who were close to him, including cutting out the eye of his previously cherished pet a very large and loving black cat and eventually hanging the cat to death by a tree limb. The mans alcoholism did not wane as it might have…...

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Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. Thirty-Two Stories. Ed. Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2000.

She writes, "Here the slippage between animal and human invokes the Hegelian horror of slavery, a dialectic which finally reduces the master to 'brute' or a 'monster'" (Ginsberg 116). This is more than an analysis of the short story; it is an analysis of slavery and its effect on gothic literature at the time.
The significance of this article is clear. It shows that Poe was not writing simply horror fiction to shock and confuse, he was writing social commentary significant to the time. It illuminates this particular work and makes it more effective, but it is also a deep looking into other slave narratives and experiences, and how they relate to Poe's writing. The author proves her point by consistently citing other works, from texts on slavery to narratives, so the overall article is extremely effective.

eferences

Ginsberg, Lesley. "Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's 'The Black Cat'." American Gothic:…...

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References

Ginsberg, Lesley. "Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's 'The Black Cat'." American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative. Ed. Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy. Iowa City: UP Iowa, 1998. 99-125.

quintessential elements of grotesque and the burlesque in Edgar Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. The author opens the story with the description of a dreary environment. "DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens"(1846). This introduction is reason enough for an instinctive reader to pre-empt the nature of things to unfold. He goes further to explain the landscape, the haunted house, "….upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees…"( 1846). Moreover, there are many other indicators of grotesque elements including the author's description of Roderick and his sister's health conditions. He goes into detail on Madeline telling of the feelings she evokes on him. Nonetheless, the vagueness in the story is…...

The most ironic thing we read in "The Black Cat," is the narrator's unstable state of mind. e should know that our first clue to his madness is his intent to assert that he is not. He writes, "Mad I am not" (Poe Black Cat 182), as he begins to pen one of the most insane narrations ever written. It is as if he is trying to convince himself of this lie. His alcoholism only makes matters worse as he wavers between extreme emotions. One moment, he loves the cat and the next moment, he hates the cat. He kills the cat to rid himself of it and, ironically, it haunts him. Of course, we cannot mention the story without mentioning how the narrator kills his wife in an effort to kill the cat. e can say that even this act is ironic because the narrator is so open…...

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Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Cask of Amontillado." Complete Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Minnesota: Amaranth Press: 1984.

The Black Cat." Complete Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Minnesota: Amaranth Press: 1984.

Platizky, Roger. "Poe's the Cask of Amontillado." EBSCO Resource Database. Site Accessed August 01, 2008.  http://search.epnet.com 

Stevenson, Robert. "Literature: 'The Works of Edgar Allan Poe.'" GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed August 01, 2008  http://www.galegroup.com

Uncontrollable Urge: The Effect of the Imp of the Perverse on Manifestations of Horror and Terror
In many of his works, Poe often explores fears through a combination of horror and terror. Through intricate storytelling, Poe explores the effects that horror, terror, and impulsivity have on the narrators in "The Imp of the Perverse," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Black Cat."

"The Imp of the Perverse," like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat," attempts to provide a logical explanation as to why the narrator acted as he did. In this case, the narrator begins by attempting to explain the role that phrenology, a science that attempts to establish and define the correlation between a person's character and the morphology of the skull, has and its unprecedented failure to explain why people can be impulsive ("The History of Morphology"). The narrator instead argues that "[t]he intellectual or logical man, rather than…...

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Works Cited

"The Gothic Experience." Department of English. Brooklyn College. 24 October 2002. Web.

Accessed 17 March 2012.

"The History of Phrenology." 28 September 2006. Web. Accessed 17 March 2012.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat." Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York:

Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, and Poe is foreshadowing a hellish and horrific experience for the narrator. He also sets up an expectation in the reader and truly tests the thin but palpable sympathetic emotional response that is built in the opening lines of the story. He foreshadows the narrator's actions by stating subtly that the narrator has begun to feel strangely as the story unfolds. The narrator states, "(I) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them.." The reader, now draw into the story, begins to feel like the narrator is not…...