A PSYCHOANLYSIS ON EDGAR ALLAN POE “ THE BLACK CAT”

By Rizaniar Itaqa K

Abstract In this paper the author to analyze “The Black Cat” by Richard WrigEdgar

Allan Poe . The purpose is to analyze and explain the reason behind the behavioral change of The Black Cat’s Narator by his psychology .The narator who was once an animal lover gradually changed into an animal abuse and abuser. Theories that used are textual, cotextual, and hypertextual by close reading method.

Keywords:  TheBlack Cat , EdgarAllan Poe , psychology 

1. Introduction

"The Black Cat" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". The story is presented as a first person narative  using an unreliable narrator. He is a condemned man at the outset of the story. The narrator tells us that from an early age he has loved animals and suddenly the narrator behavior change into an animal abuse and abuser .

2. Theory & Method  Intrinsic Theory

Characters and Characterizationsü  “ Character can be defined as any person, animal,

or figure represented in a literary work. Every story must have main characters. These are the characters that will have the greatest effect on the plot or are the most affected by what happens in the story. A protagonist is a main character who generates the action of a story and engages the reader's interest and empathy. An antagonist is a character who opposes the protagonist.” 

ü  “Characterization is a literary device that is used step by step in literature to highlight and explain the details about a character in a story.”

Extrinsic Theory

•     Psychology According to Dictionary of Psychology, Reber (1995) wrote: “Psychology simply cannot be defined; indeed, it cannot even

be easily characterized . Psy-nchology is what scientists and philosophers of various persuasions have created to understand the minds and behaviors of various organisms from the most primitive to the most complex . It is an attempt to understand what has so far pretty much escaped understanding, and any effort to circumscribe it or box it in is to imply that something is known about the edges of our knowledge, and that must be wrong. (p. 617)” .

Method

Textual Method Close Reading “Close Reading of text involves an investigation of a short

piece of text, with multiple readings done over multiple instructional lessons.”

Contextual Method      Psychoanalysis• Psychoanalysis  is  a  method  of  therapy.   It  includes 

discussion and investigation of hidden fears and conflicts. Sigmund Freud used free association.  He would try to get his  patients  to  free  their  minds  and  say  whatever  they were thinking.  He also had them talk about their dreams to try to explore their unconscious fears and desires.

Freud described personality by dividing it into three main subjects; personality structure, personality dynamics and personality development. This work uses the defense mechanisms which occurs within the personality dynamics to analyze the The Black Cat characters in the short story.

• Irrational : The term irrational is often used in psychotherapy and the concept of irrationality is especially known in rational emotive behavior therapy originated and developed by American psychologist Albert Ellis. In this approach, the term irrational is used in a slightly different way than in general. Here irrationality is defined as the tendency and leaning that humans have to act, emote and think in ways that are inflexible, unrealistic, absolutist and most importantly self-defeating and socially defeating and destructive.

• 2.   Perversion :  a type of human behavior that deviates from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal. Perversion differs from deviant behavior, in that the latter covers areas of behavior (such as petty crime) for which perversion would be too strong a term. 

• 3.  Guilt : a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

3. Research Object

The objects of research are sorted into a material and formal object. Material object in this study is The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe . Formal object of this research is a Psychology analysis character .

4. Biography and The Story

Biography• Edgar Allan Poe was  born  January  19,  1809, 

Boston,  Massachusetts,  U.S.  American  short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's  tales  of mystery  and  horror  initiated  the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his  tales  of  horror  is  unrivaled  in  American fiction.  His The Raven (1845)  numbers  among the best-known poems in national literature.

Summary of The Black Cat

• In Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat, the main character is a man leading a happy  life with his wife  and many household pets. His  favorite pets  is  a black  cat,  Pluto.  The  main  character,  however,  becomes  overwhelmed with alcohol and in turn, becomes more irritable. He also feels suspicious that the cat is avoiding him for some reason. The main character begins to hate  his  former  friend.  One  night,  after  coming  home  intoxicated  with alcohol, Plutos cratches the man’s hand and  in turn has his right eye cut out. The cat fears the man now, hiding from him at every turn. The man gets enraged, and out of anger and sorrow at his lost friend, hangs the cat by the neck from a tree branch. Almost as suddenly, a new cat appears a

      black one with only a splash of white on his chest can tell him apart from Pluto. Eventually the man grows to loathe this cat as well and attempts to murder him with an axe. His wife stops him and is rewarded with an axe in her  head.  Attempting  to  hide  the  corpse,  the main  character  buries  his dead  wife  in  the  cellar  wall.  He  raps  on  the  wall  in  front  of  some policemen  cockily  showing  he  has  nothing  to  hide  but  then  the  cat  is heard screeching from inside. He had accidentally walled the cat up in the tomb. The police reveal what the man has done and his punishment is to be hung.

5. Discussion

5.1 Textual Discussion5.1.1         Characters & Characterization

• The Narrator: The narrator has some major issues. This unnamed character  is  an abusive bully  and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and himself. In addition to the details of his heinous crimes, he reveals his psychological transformation from “nice guy” to villain. 

• The Narrator’s Wife: The brief outline the narrator suggests to us of his wife states that she is kind, giving, loyal, and even heroic at the end. She is a highly sympathetic character , in her own right .

• Pluto: Pluto is fine specimen of a cat. All black, large, fuzzy, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. Over the years Pluto moves from a pampered pet to an abused beast. He is blinded and ultimately murdered by his owner. The narrator makes us believe that he is actually a witch in disguise, transforming from which to Pluto, to the second black cat.

•  Second Black Cat, a cat that resembles the first black cat and may be a reincarnation of the latter–or so the narrator may think.

5.2 Contextual Analysis

• 5.2.1 Psychoanalysis •      Short story, “The Black Cat” portrays three main

psychological aspects of the human mind that include irrationality, perversity, and guilt. From the beginning of the story, it is clearly understood that the main character is superstitious. He recalls his wife’s words as “mywife,…, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise”. The narator calls his wife superstitious, but as the story proceeds,it can be seen that he is far more superstitious himself. Moreover, the narator begins to believe in the reincarnation of the black cat. Upon seeing the second cat, he quickly brings into mind the appearance of Pluto and how both catsresemble. 

    “It was a black cat a very large one- fully as large as Pluto, and closelyresembling him in every respect but one”. 

His mind is full of these irrational beliefs that scare him and lead him to the hatred of the second cat and the murder of his beloved wife. “…, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from doing so, partlyit at by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly-- let me confess it at once-- by absolute dread of the beast” Therefore, the superstition in the mind of the main character is his primaryreason for killing the second cat. In addition to this, the author in “The Black Cat” expresses “the spirit of perverseness” through his main character. Perverseness can be characterized as a conscious persistency in doing wrong,even to the loved ones. This condition is always followed by guilt, which is another psychological aspect of the story.

If the story is not read analytically, the reader can say that his aggressiveness is due to his consumption of alcohol,consequently,making him a violent murderer. Furthermore, if it is readwith deeper exploration, the cause of his violence comes out to be his perverseness. “this spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow…to offer violence to its own nature to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only that urged me to continue and finally toconsummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.” Psychologists describe impulses as a radical imbalance of behavior and an original sinof the theologians, but the author puts a much vivid light on it. He explains that once an idea or impulsehits the mind of a person, he cannot resist from acting upon it.

6. Conclusion

The analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” as perceived through the lens of psychoanalytic discourse has shown that fictional reality in this story, as perceived by the narrator, is greatly unreliable on the account of the fact that the psychoanalytic inquiry of his actions has shown considerable discrepancies in his perception of reality which is tinctured by the inclusion of supernatural elements within the narration. The analysis has also concluded that “The Black Cat” can be interpreted as a narrative dealing not with the supernatural, but rather with the natural and the causal.

REFERENCE • (www.literarydevices.net)• (

http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/BlackCat.html )

• (www.aspendrl.org )• ( 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/Psych%20Defined.pdf )

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_(emotion)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perversion• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrationality•  www.aspendrl.org