CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
I.1 Background
Thank
God we pray to the presence of the Almighty God for the mercy, grace was able
to complete our paper is about “The
Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe”.
“The Black Cat” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe which
was published in August 19th, 1834. The short story consists of 24
pages. The short story contains about
“Mythological Approaches”, and that is why i chose this short story to be
analyzed. This short story is sort of good for English Major students, since
the language itself is not too hard to understand and contains so many
figurative speeches.
I.2 The Reason
The reason I want to analyze short story
"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe is because this short story is
very interesting to be analyzed. And Also in the short story contains about “Mythological Approaches”, and that is
why I chose this short story to be analyzed.
I.3 The Problem
Problem
in the short story "The Back Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe is a black cat. He
started drinking heavily, several years after Pluto (the name’s of his cat) became his pet.
CHAPTER
II
II.1 Anecdot
Mythological Approach is
about the symbolic meaning, the undertones of the archetypes: The moon that
looms large over the horizon is different than the moon that sits quietly
unnoticed in the heavens. Each has a different undertone of the archetype of
the moon. While they share certain qualities, they also vary in certain
qualities and meanings.Many were skeptical of this approach, since it appears
to lean towards the mystery, but then anthropological studies began to advance
at the end of the 19th century, and it has been one of the biggest influences
on mythological criticism. I use Mythological Approaches because in “The Black
Cat” short story by Edgar Allan Poe which was published in August 19th, 1834.
Its content appropriate from this short story. The short story consists of 24
pages. The short story contains about
“Mythological Approaches”, and that is why i chose this short story to be
analyzed.
The mythology of the black cat symbol occurs because the
reality of people who think that cats (especially black cats) is the
incarnation of the witch, also a symbol of death and misfortune. In Edgar Allan
Poe's short story created in 1843 with the theme of gotic and horror, Poe
described the cat named Pluto is actually innocent and neutral turned into a
figure antagonist result of delusion created by the narrator, as well as the
myth built by black cat community about crime.
During the Middle Ages in Europe black cat is considered
as a companion of witches, and anyone caught was with the cat will be killed.
This superstition caused people to kill a black cat on a large scale. Even the times are changing, the myth of the black cat
has not changed. A myth that has been rooted in the community continued to see
a black cat as a symbol of bad luck. Almost of all of the legends in the world
depicts a black cat as a creature that has a mystical power. Although, in Japan
a black cat is a symbol of good luck black cat in Indonesia is still considered
as a symbol of bad luck.
II.2 Biography of Edgar Allan Poe
The short story
"The Black Cat" is written by Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar
Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That makes him Capricorn, on the
cusp of Aquarius. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in
Baltimore on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in
1796 and married David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three
children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. Elizabeth
Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from her
husband and had taken her three kids with her. Henry went to live with his
grandparents while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was
taken in by another family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew
up in good surroundings and went to good schools. When
Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He learned Latin and
French, as well as math and history. He later returned to school in America and
continued his studies. Edgar Allan went to the University of Virginia in 1826.
He was 17. Even though John Allan had plenty of money, he only gave Edgar about
a third of what he needed. Although Edgar had done well in Latin and French, he
started to drink heavily and quickly became in debt. He had to quit school less
than a year later.
Poe in the Army
Edgar Allan had no money, no job skills, and had
been shunned by John Allan. Edgar went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in
1827. He was 18. He did reasonably well in the Army and attained the rank of
sergeant major. In 1829, Mrs. Allan died and John Allan tried to be friendly
towards Edgar and signed Edgar's application to West Point.
While waiting to enter West Point, Edgar lived with
his grandmother and his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. Also living there was his brother,
Henry, and young cousin, Virginia. In 1830, Edgar Allan entered West Point as a
cadet. He didn't stay long because John Allan refused to send him any money. It
is thought that Edgar purposely broke the rules and ignored his duties so he
would be dismissed.
A Struggling Writer
In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where
he had some of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of
magazines and they were all rejected. Poe had no friends, no job, and was in
financial trouble. He sent a letter to John Allan begging for help but none came.
John Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will.
In 1835, Edgar finally got a job as an editor of a
newspaper because of a contest he won with his story, "The Manuscript
Found in a Bottle". Edgar missed Mrs. Clemm and Virginia and brought them
to Richmond to live with him. In 1836, Edgar married his cousin, Virginia. He
was 27 and she was 13. Many sources say Virginia was 14, but this is incorrect.
Virginia Clemm was born on August 22, 1822. They were married before her 14th
birthday, in May of 1836. In case you didn't figure it out already, Virginia
was Virgo.
As the editor for the Southern Literary Messenger,
Poe successfully managed the paper and increased its circulation from 500 to
3500 copies. Despite this, Poe left the paper in early 1836, complaining of the
poor salary. In 1837, Edgar went to New York. He wrote "The Narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym" but he could not find any financial success. He moved
to Philadelphia in 1838 where he wrote "Ligeia" and "The Haunted
Palace". His first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque
and Arabesque" was published in 1839. Poe received the copyright and 20
copies of the book, but no money.
Sometime in 1840, Edgar Poe joined George R. Graham
as an editor for Graham's Magazine. During the two years that Poe worked for
Graham's, he published his first detective story, "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue" and challenged readers to send in cryptograms, which he always
solved. During the time Poe was editor, the circulation of the magazine rose
from 5000 to 35,000 copies. Poe left Graham's in 1842 because he wanted to
start his own magazine.
Poe
found himself without a regular job once again. He tried to start a magazine
called The Stylus and failed. In 1843, he published some booklets containing a
few of his short stories but they didn't sell well enough.
He won a hundred dollars for his story, "The Gold Bug" and sold a few
other stories to magazines but he barely had enough money to support his
family. Often, Mrs. Clemm had to contribute financially. In 1844, Poe moved
back to New York. Even though "The Gold Bug" had a circulation of
around 300,000 copies, he could barely make a living.
In 1845, Edgar Poe became an editor at The Broadway
Journal. A year later, the Journal ran out of money and Poe was out of a job
again. He and his family moved to a small cottage near what is now East 192nd
Street. Virginia's health was fading away and Edgar was deeply distressed by
it. Virginia died in 1847, 10 days after Edgar's birthday. After losing his
wife, Poe collapsed from stress but gradually returned to health later that
year.
Final Days
In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to
Philadelphia, where he visited his friend John Sartain. Poe left Philadelphia
in July and came to Richmond. He stayed at the Swan Tavern Hotel but joined
"The Sons of Temperance" in an effort to stop drinking. He renewed a
boyhood romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in October On
September 27, Poe left Richmond for New York. He went to Philadelphia and
stayed with a friend named James P. Moss. On September 30, he meant to go to
New York but supposedly took the wrong train to Baltimore. On October 3, Poe
was found at Gunner's Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, and was
taken to the hospital. He lapsed in and out of consciousness but was never able
to explain exactly what happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died in the hospital
on Sunday, October 7, 1849.[1]
II.3 Summary
Because
he is due to die the next day, the narrator has decided to present the facts of
a past event that has terrified and destroyed him, although he claims that he
is not mad and hopes that someone else will be able to explain his story
logically. He begins by describing his kind and humane younger self: he keeps
many pets because animals such as dogs are so loving and faithful, and at a
young age he marries a woman who also loves pets. In their household they have
a number of animals, including a large and beautiful black cat named Pluto.
Although his wife often refers to the superstition that black cats are actually
disguised witches, the narrator is particularly fond of the unusually
intelligent cat. In subsequent years, the narrator becomes increasingly moody
and irritable due to alcoholism, and he begins to verbally abuse and threaten
his wife as well as his pets. He remains less harsh to Pluto until one day,
when he comes home drunk and, imagining that Pluto is avoiding him, he seizes
the cat, which bites him on the hand in fear. In response, the narrator loses
control and cuts one of Pluto's eyes out with a pen-knife. After sobering up
the next morning, he feels a modicum of remorse but returns to drinking. The
cat recovers, but it conspicuously avoids its owner, who is at first grieved
and later annoyed and provoked. He describes it as a primitive impulse of
perverseness that drives him to complete his attack on Pluto by hanging the cat
from a tree, although he cries as he does the deed, aware that he has committed
a deadly sin on an animal that once loved him. The same night as the cat's
death, the house is set on fire, and the narrator, his wife, and his servant
barely escape, although he is left with little wealth. Peculiarly, on the
single wall that did not fall in the fire is an image of a gigantic cat with a
rope around its neck. The narrator explains the phenomenon away, reasoning that
someone must have thrown the cat into his window to try to wake him up in the
fire and that as other walls fell, they must have compressed the animal into
the plaster, where the lime, the heat, and the ammonia from the cat's body
combined to form the image. However, he remains disturbed and feels a sense of
regret that falls just short of remorse. For months, the narrator searches for
a replacement cat, which he discovers while drinking. The new cat resembles
Pluto except for a patch of white hair on its chest. The landlord has never
seen the animal before, and the cat takes a liking to the narrator, who brings
it home. His wife becomes fond of the cat, but the narrator is increasingly
annoyed with the cat's affection towards him, and his annoyance turns into
hatred. He begins avoiding the cat, although his shame about his previous
cruelty prevents him from being violent towards it. His hatred of the animal
increases until one day the cat loses one of its eyes. This endears it even
more to his loving wife, who has retained the kindness that the narrator admits
he used to have. In spite of the narrator's dislike for the cat, it follows him
everywhere, and he begins to dread the cat, which he calls a "beast."
As his wife often points out, the cat bears a distinct resemblance to Pluto,
except for the white patch that the narrator notes has gradually come to resemble
a gallows. The narrator fearfully explains that he has lost what was left of
his former goodness, and he indulges in hatred and fury, although his wife
never complains. At one point, when the protagonist and his wife enter their
cellar, the cat trips him. Enraged, he starts to take an axe to the cat, but
his wife's hand stops his arm. Furious at her interruption, he strikes her head
with the blade, killing her instantly. Realizing that he cannot remove the body
from the house, he considers ways to conceal it, including cutting it up and
burning it, digging a grave in the cellar, throwing the corpse into the well,
and packing it up in a box and having it carried out of the house under the
guise of merchandise. Eventually he decides to wall it up with plaster in the
cellar behind a false fireplace, leaving no evidence of the deed. The narrator
tries to find the cat so he can kill it, but the animal is nowhere to be found,
and he sleeps well that night, free of guilt. On the second and third days, the
cat does not appear, inspiring relief in the narrator, but on the following
day, policemen come to investigate. The narrator calmly cooperates, and the
policemen find nothing, despite searching the cellar multiple times. The
narrator bids the police farewell, but in a fit of bravado, he mentions that
the walls of the house are sturdily constructed, and with a cane, he raps on
the wall that hides his wife. A cry emanates from behind the wall, evolving
from a muffled, broken sob into an inhuman scream. Seeing that the game is up,
the narrator staggers away from the wall, and after pausing from terror and
awe, the police disassemble the wall and find the cat "with red extended
mouth and solitary eye of fire" sitting on the head of the corpse. The
narrator realizes, to his horror, that he must have trapped the cat behind the
wall along with his wife.[1]
II.4 Assumption
The short story has something to do with
mythological approaches. Because the main player of the story is a black cat.
As we know black cat has a lot of myths associated with the black magic.
II.5 Theory
of Frame
II.5.a Mythological Approaches
Mythological critics look for the recurrent universal patterns underlying
most literary works. (“Myth and Narrative,” for a definition of myth and a
discussion of its importance to the literary imagination.) Mythological
criticism is an interdisciplinary approach that combines the insights of
anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion. If psychological
criticism examines the artist as an individual, mythological criticism explores
the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses
myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.
A central concept in mythological criticism is the
archetype, a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep
universal response. The idea of the archetype came into literary criticism from
the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a lifetime student of myth and religion. Jung
believed that all individuals share a “collective unconscious,” a set of primal
memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind.
Archetypal images (which often relate to experiencing
primordial phenomena like the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood), Jung
believed, trigger the collective unconscious. We do not need to accept the
literal truth of the collective unconscious, however, to endorse the archetype
as a helpful critical concept. The late Northrop Frye defined the archetype in
considerably less occult terms as “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs
often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary
experience as a whole.”
Identifying archetypal symbols and situations in
literary works, mythological critics almost inevitably link the individual text
under discussion to a broader context of works that share an underlying
pattern. In discussing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, a
mythological critic might relate Shakespeare’s Danish prince to other mythic
sons avenging their fathers’ deaths, like Orestes from Greek myth or Sigmund of
Norse legend; or, in discussingOthello, relate the sinister figure
of Iago to the devil in traditional Christian belief. Critic Joseph Campbell
took such comparisons even further; his compendious study The
Hero with a Thousand Faces demonstrates how similar
mythic characters appear in virtually every culture on every continent.[1]
II.6.
Literary Review
Kenneth Silverman has offered a similar observation, but with more psychological
suggestiveness, indicating that tales like
"The Black Cat" "dramatize failures of various
defenses, the protagonists' futile attempts to conceal from themselves and
others what they feel" (209). The narrator's motive for murdering his
wife seems to be subconscious and, therefore, the crime is not consciously
premeditated. Nor is the narrator able to understand rationally or to persuade
convincingly why he has done this terrible deed, though he repeatedly offers
explanations--actually untenable rationalizations--for his former actions. (https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-83585370/poe-s-the-black-cat-as-psychobiography-some-reflections)
THE ANALYSIS OF MYTHOLOGICAL APPROACH
IN
THE BLACK CAT by EDGAR ALLAN POE
In
this section I will discuss about the story of “The Black Cat”. Where the story is told of a man who was very
good, loving family, and was very fond of animals. But, after the presence of a
black cat which he named Pluto, he became an alcoholic. This short story
nuanced gothic, horror, and supernatunaral.
Started when the first time Pluto in his home. In the
following quotation described the first time the narrator has Pluto. The
narrator came home late, and full of drink. As in the quote below:
“ I remember that night very
well. I came home late, full of drink again. I could not understand why Pluto
was not pleased to see me. The cat was staying away from me. My Pluto did not
want to come near me! I caught him and picked him up, holding him strongly. He
was afraid of me and bit my hand.” ( Edgar Allan Poe, 1999:2).
Supernatural,
things are not logical and the horrible thoughts began to emerge in the mind
narrator. Narrator illustrates that maybe he was mad because fear always swept.
He was convinced that it was a ghost cat who finally had mastered his mind.
Cats, which was once the beloved pet turned into a ghost to him. As in the
myths that have been there. Such as the following quotation:
“ How can I explain this fear?
It was not really a fear of something evil . . . but then how else can I
possibly describe it? Slowly, this strange fear grew into horror. Yes, horror.
If I tell you why, you will not believe me. You will think Iam mad”. ( Edgar
Allan Poe, 1999:2).
Cats
who became a symbol of mystical re-emerged at the end of the story, namely when
the police tried to break down the walls that supposedly dead body of his wife
who had been killed narrator. Accidentally narrator has buried it on the wall
with his wife. He considers that he has been possessed by the black cat. Following
the quotation as:
“And there was the cat,
standing on her head, his red mouth wide open in a scream, and his one gold eye
shining like fire. The clever animal! My wife was dead because of him, and now
his evil voice was sending me to the gallows.”(Edgar Allan Poe, 1999:2)
CHAPTER
III
CONCLUSION
After I finished
analyzed this short story, I can describe if this short story is a great
example to show a how a mythological approaches in Gothic literature. This
analysis focused on the works of Edgar
Allan Poe's The Black Cat. By showing various perception narrator about cats
that he had. In this story the cat seemed to be a wicked whisper that inspires
feelings of the narrator to kill his wife. Then how this work has the power of
horror due to the myths and legends that have been constructed by the western
society. Moreover, I also need to examine the influence of psychoanalysis on
alcohol that occurs in the narrator.
Bibliography
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