Эдгар Алан По

Edgar Allen Poe An Archetypal approach to his writings by: Ashish Basuray Throughout Edgar Allen Poe's life, many factors have contributed and influenced his writing style. He lived a difficult life, because he was raised in a dysfunctional household. This is not the main factor to his intriguing writing style, but it is a main factor in the understanding of Poe. He was by a step-father who did not love him, or he dictated his Victorian values so exhaustively that it warped young Allen's impressionable mind. But the final product of Edgar Allen Poe's mind is printed in his short stories and poems. Edgar Allen Poe's stories all have similar motifs and composition that would suggest suppressed emotions from life experiences are being discharged through his writings. Three main motifs that can be related back to his psyche are: the old man/father figure, his obsessions on an object, and his relations to death. Throughout his life he strove to not be like his step-father, and to be a better person than his step-father. In the least, he wanted all memories of him and his ways out of his life. Therefore, he oppressed the memories and when the sub-conscience part of his mind is working on writing, this motif appears. The father figure usually appears as an old man, or someone with some sagacity. This old man is not derived from Joseph Campbell's archetype of an old-man figure. The old man figure in Joseph Campbell's interpretation is one who is close to omnipotence. Since the old man is close to death, it gives him a different outlook on life. This different outlook usually has perspicacity behind it from all the experience throughout a lifetime. Similarly, in Poe's writing, the old man figure may retain knowledge but he is far different than the contemporary definition of the old man archetype. Poe relates the old man figure as one that has a certain type of evil that is inside of him. As in the case of "The Tell Tale Heart" the narrator doesn't hate the man that he's going to kill, he hates the fake eye. The eye represents evil, and Poe converts everything to black and white. If a part of the kind man is evil, then the whole man is evil, hence, he kills him. And Poe doesn't see the act of killing bad, but a cleansing action, ridding the world of one more evil. In "The Descent into the Maelstrom" the captain was the old man / father figure. Guiding the people in the boat closet to the edge of existence, into the maelstrom. And Poe makes it the captains fault that they are caught in the outer ring of the maelstrom and are coming closer to the center. But he shows his optimistic side as the vessel escapes the whirlpool, and breaks free. However, I do not believe it was Poe's intention to credit the captain with the escape, but rather luck perhaps, or the perseverance of the crew. Likewise in the Black Cat, the husband in the story was particularly cruel and unjust to the cats. The cats were probably representing Poe when he was defenseless and young. And the temper that his step-father would act out on Poe, was the same temper that the "cat-killer" would kill the cat and his wife. It is no doubt that Poe's traumatic childhood played a key factor exposing the "evil-old man" figure. Poe was not inebriated when he wrote his work, and therefore has a certain level of consciousness when portraying a character such as the old man figure. Most of Poe's stories have a continual motif of obsessive-compulsive behavior. This would be expected of Poe when taking a look at his life. He was kicked out of West Point for gambling, a clearly addictive, form of recreation. He would have this personality trait from deprivation of a certain element during his childhood. This characteristic also present in Poe's writing; the obsessive attitude the narrator has towards many things. It sounds as neurotic as Nurse Ratchet in "Over The Cuckoo's Nest." Weather Poe is trying to sound like that, is up to debate, but one can speculate that he was a neurotic person, tacit and introverted but on the inside he is quite active. For instance, on the "Tell Tale Heart" he was obsessed with " the beating of the hideous heart!" Or in the "Black Cat" he was obsessed with the killing the cat. And in both of those stories he was not afraid of the police, but their presence there pushed him over the edge. Like in "Crime and Punishment" Raskolnikov thought that he had committed the perfect murder, but it turns out that he deteriorates until he has to confess. Likewise, the narrator thinks that he has made such an immaculate job in cleaning up the body that nobody will find him, but he never considers the "x-factor." That is characteristic of someone that is extremely compulsive, they will act without thinking about the variables in the "equation." In the Masque of Red Death he is obsessed with the "Red Death." May of his stories have this attribute, making it more common, hence, less noticeable. Yet, this obsessive/compulsive attitude is part of Poe's personality, and therefore is expressed through his writing. The most prominent feature of Edgar Allen Poe's writing is his obsession with death. He is afraid to die, and yet he does not think highly of his lifetime. While people strive from the lowest places to the highest places (i.e. Frederick Douglas), he maintains his place in life as if it were to be constant. Poe does not do much under his own guidance, as if he was a child throughout his life. He is always looking to authorities or ultimatums (i.e. death, the police). That leads to the fact that he may have a superiority complex, and therefore feels inadequate throughout life. He does not demonstrate that he lives life; he writes to survive, and that was his motive for survival. Poe was always under the domineering control of his step-father, and when he was independent, he did not know what to do. As in the case of children burn-outs, they work excessively hard to get into college, and then, when they are independent of their parents supervision, they do not know what to do, therefore drink and do drugs. Relating this point back to Poe, he needs structure in his life and does not receive adequate structure, therefore, he does not spend his life meaningfully. And the only thing that Poe obsesses about in his stories is about death, and facing death, because even though he wants to evade it, subconsciously that is all he has to wait for. So, needless to say, every story contains either a direct mention of death or a tacit one, but it is there. "Descent into a Maelstrom" is one of the few stories that a death does not happen and as said earlier, this was one of his more optimistic stories. Even in "The Bells", Poe talks about all bells, a journey through life, until "the sound of those retched Bells!" haunt him as does his imminent death. There is even a story called, "The Premature Burial," which shows one the extent of his obsessive behavior towards death.Poe's writing does more than entertain the reader. It can be an insight into the dark and somber world of Edgar Allen Poe. One does not understand the meaning of Poe if one reads at the superficial level. One has to read into Poe, and understand the hardships of his life and how he maintained them that way. He knew that death was an inevitable part of life, it is the price of life, but, he tried to fight it as if it was an unnatural part of life. He was an extremely intriguing man from all view points, and he was and is, the dark side of all of us. INTRODUCTION TO POE'S PSYCHOLOGY Eureka represents what Poe believed were unalterable truths which govern the material and spiritual universe. How, then, can a reader of Eureka, himself a denizen of the universe, resist attributing the same consistencies and truths to material and spiritual man, who, according to Poe, exists as a God-like reflection of Poe's grand cosmic scheme. The obvious answer? He can't resist, for Poe knew that every aspect of man's being is indentured to the Divine Will. This essay, the second of the series, will discuss the psychological implications of Poe's universal constants. In Eureka we find Poe's explanation that our universe has spun from unity to diversity, that all of creation has been thrown into the "unnatural" condition of multiform particulars. In my first essay, Poe is credited for postulating what science later tagged the "Big Bang" theory of creation. But Poe's description is decidedly oriented to his own spirituality; for example, he states that all spiritual and material manifestations of the universe are but individuations emanating from the unity of the Godhead, and that these spiritual and material individuations long for, and eventually return to, that Divine Unity, which Poe believed to be the "natural" condition of the universe. Upon reunification, God recreates the universe in another horrendous explosion, initiating the next expansion sequence. Poe called this compression and expansion of the universe the heartbeat of God. It is important for readers of this essay to note Poe's belief that only in dissolution, in death, can the longing for unity imprinted on all matter and spirit be satisfied. In extension of this premise, this essay focuses intently upon perverseness, that impetus of mind which describes Poe's obsession, the longing of everything to rejoin within the Godhead, the tendency of all, including humanity, to seek its demise. And what could be more perverse than a personal quest for dissolution? Moralists and philosophers who precurse Poe well understood that humans possess creative intelligence. Volume upon volume regarding the sources and substance of creative genius populate the libraries of literary and philosophical theory. As humans, we might even revel in the notion that we are supremely creative among all creatures. Yet how comparatively few, before or since Poe's time, have examined the countervailing coercion of man--the perverse, that primal instinct which betrays creative genius, that seed of annihilation, which Poe believed, is secreted in every material and spiritual filament of the cosmos. Interestingly, Poe's belief in the perverse caused him to transcend traditional morality, instead, searching out this radical impulse, which he believed rules the dark side of human behavior. Important distinctions must be drawn here, distinctions required by our living in a culture with an ethic steeped in morality. When Poe speaks of perverseness, he does not intend narrower denotations of the various forms of the word. He does not mean "perverted," as in sexual miscreance. Though such deviancy may be perverse, it bears little resemblance to the examples of perversity which Poe elucidated in his tales. POE'S TRANSCENDENTALISM In addition, it is useful to consider Poe's singular contribution to transcendental thought. Himself lukewarm to Emersonian transcendentalism, Poe was careful not to reject the philosophy outright. Such a rejection would have required intellectual ingestion of a prodigious hypocrisy pill, since Poe himself professed a fervent desire to transcend the folly of the flesh to the realm of pure spirit. In Eureka Poe revealed that he also intended transcendence of all a priori and a posteriori thought, to the realm of imagination, where pure spirit dwells free of mortal encumbrance. If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre in the sky. (Poe 742-43) Thus, in Poe, we have perhaps the most profound of transcendentalists, albeit the optimism of most British and American proponents of the philosophy. In stark contrast, Poe burned with a spiritual quest which would not be satisfied by transcendentalism's fleeting epiphanies. Poe sought not glimpses, but total dwelling in this spirit realm. Thus his characters wage war against their "mortal coils." Only when they throw away their lives can they achieve the ultimate transcendence--death. POE'S REJECTION OF MORAL DIDACTICISM: "NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD" As one might expect, Poe himself eschewed conventional morality, which he believed stems from man's attempts to dictate the purposes of God. Poe saw God more as process than purpose. He believed that moralists derive their beliefs, and thus, the resultant behavioral patterns, from a priori knowledge. In Eureka, we find that Poe shunned such artifices of mind, systems which, he professed, have no basis in reality. Yet Poe employed in his writing the diction of the moral tome, which causes confusion for readers immersed in this tradition. Daniel Hoffman reiterates Allan Tate's position that, aside from his atavistic employment of moral terminology, Poe writes as though "Christianity had never been invented." (Hoffman 171) Poe did offer to posterity one tale with a moral. Written in 1841 at the dawn of Poe's most creative period, Poe delivers to his readers a satirical spoof, a literary Bronx cheer to writers of moralistic fiction, and to critics who expressed disapprobation at finding no discernible moral in his works. The tale "Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral" presents Poe's "way of staying execution" (Poe 487) for his transgressions against the didactics. The story's main character is Toby Dammit, who from infanthood had been flogged left-handed, which, since the world revolves right to left, causes evil propensities to be driven home rather than driven out. The narrator relates that by the age of seven months, Toby was chasing down and kissing the female babies, that by eight months he had flatly refused to sign the Temperance Pledge, and that by the end of his first year, he'd taken to "wearing moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions with bets." (Poe 488) As Toby reaches manhood, the narrator finally accepts that his young friend is incorrigible. By this time, Toby utters scarcely a sentence without oaths, his favorite of which is to bet the devil his head that he can accomplish whatever challenge lies before him. One day as the narrator accompanies Toby Dammit on a route which requires the crossing of a covered bridge, Toby bets the devil his head that he can leap over a bridge stile, pigeon winging as he performs the feat. Unexpectedly a "little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect" (Poe 491) interrupts with an emphatic "ahem" to take Toby up on his bet. The elderly gentleman wears a "a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly down over a white cravat." Oddly, his eyes are "carefully rolled up into the top of his head," (491) and he wears a black silk apron. After he takes charge of Toby, allowing him a running start, the elderly interloper takes his position just behind the stile. The narrator awaits the gentleman's "One--two--three--and--away," when Toby initiates his running leap. To all appearances, the young reprobate is destined to clear the stile easily, pigeon-winging as he flies, when abruptly his progress is arrested, and the luckless Toby falls flat on his back on his side of the stile. The elderly gentleman is indistinctly seen wrapping a bulky object in his apron, and taking his leave of them. When the narrator throws open an adjacent window, he sees that Toby has been deprived of his head by a sharp, heretofore unnoticed cross-support located directly above the stile. Stated so that the targets of Poe's ridicule cannot miss it, the moral of his tale is its title. Yet the moral of the tale is not its theme. Poe purposes ridicule of those who presume to judge him, and of their small-mindedness. This ridicule is his theme. His rendering of this riotous spoof illustrates that Poe believed he had more important things to do than pass moral judgment in his tales. Poe instead opted to depict what occurred to him as the natural order of man's behavior, rather than to engage in baseless speculation concerning what God intended for the individual. Appropriately, Poe asks, "if we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being! If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation." (Poe 280-81) Instead, Poe's work penetrated to the truths which govern the universe. How petty the moralists of his day must have seemed to him! DOING THE WRONG THING: A PORTRAIT OF PERVERSITY Poe became enchanted with forces, oft-mistaken by the pedants of his and our time, as moral evil, but which Poe saw differently. Rather, he explored the counterpart to creativity, insisting that humans are also predisposed towards the perverse, that radical impulse described for us by the narrator of "The Imp of the Perverse," who declares that no reason can be more unreasonable; but in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain than I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone compels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, primitive impulse--elementary. (281) The culturally conditioned can easily miss Poe's point here if moral connotations of the word "wrong" override Poe's intent. In Poe, wrong is wrong because it is perverse, not because the Bible told him so. Wrong is wrong because it is damaging to the personality who initiates the action. When Roderick in "The Fall of the House of Usher" speaks of "a constitutional evil," many assume that he has committed some monstrous act which is so morally hideous that he cannot recover, missing entirely Poe's archetypal portrayal of perversity, which with "certain minds, under certain conditions, ...becomes irresistible." But more of Roderick's plight in another essay. THE COMPULSION TO PERVERSENESS: "THE BLACK CAT" Poe did not find it sufficient that he essay his theory of perversity in one story only. Perhaps his most lucid portrayal of perversity resides in his masterfully told tale "The Black Cat." That work's narrator owns a black cat named Pluto, which he dearly loves. However, the cat's owner takes to drinking, and one day, in a tantrum, he is seized by perverse impulses beyond his control. He captures the unfortunate creature, and with his pen knife, removes one of its eyes. This is but the beginning of the narrator's sorrows. He recognizes that it was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself--to offer violence to own nature--to do wrong for the wrong's sake only--that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;--hung it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;--hung it because I knew it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no offence;--hung it because I knew that in doing so I was committing a sin--a deadly sin that would 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 and Most Terrible God. (Poe, "The Black Cat" 225) Again, Poe employs language which can send a traditional moralist howling about the wages of sin. But catch the subjunctive, "if such a thing were possible." Poe makes it clear, even in this extreme set of circumstances, that he does not believe it possible to be beyond the reach of God. In Eureka we saw why. In that work, Poe portrayed God as manifest in the works of his own creation. We saw him further declare that all things of the universe contain "the germ of their inevitable annihilation." Speaking through his narrators," Poe illustrates perversity as the "germ" of annihilation as it resides in the human psyche. But, for now, let us return to the story to witness perversity wreak its havoc. The night of the day he hanged Pluto, a fire swept through the narrator's house. He, his wife, and the servant escaped. Although the conflagration had completely destroyed the house, one wall had not fallen. Upon visiting the ruin, the narrator witnessed in the standing wall, "as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat...There was a rope about the animal's neck." (Poe 66) The image of the cat detailed in what had been a freshly plastered wall profoundly affects the fancies of the narrator. As if to atone for his actions, the narrator begins a search to adopt a similar cat, which he finally locates "in a den of more than infamy...reposing on the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum." (66) The new cat is completely black except for an indefinite white splotch on its chest. It follows him home. At first he likes the cat, for it is quite affectionate. But his attitude changes; tension builds anew. The tension grows to hatred, caused in part by the narrator's discovery that, like Pluto, the new cat has been deprived of an eye. The narrator, only because of his terrors about his first cat, restrains himself from doing the new cat harm. But to his horror, the white patch of fur on his new cat's chest gradually assumes the shape of the gallows. The narrator begins to fancy the cat as the tormentor of his heart, its hot breath in his face. Perversely, the narrator succumbs entirely to evil thoughts, "hatred of all things and of all mankind." (Poe 68) Finally, one day as the narrator and his wife descend the steps into their cellar, the cat causes the narrator to lose his footing. In turn, the narrator flies into a rage and tries to axe the cat. The wife, trying to save the life of the cat, catches hold of the axe. Then entirely out of his mind, the narrator plants the axe in her skull. To avoid detection in his crime, he bricks his wife into a cellar wall. But the luckless narrator accidentally bricks the cat into the wall as well. After searching for the dreaded cat, the narrator concludes that the beast has "in terror, fled the premises forever." However, the fourth day, the police arrive to thoroughly examine the house. They leave no "nook or corner unexplored." (Poe 60) Even upon their third or fourth visit to the cellar, the narrator remains sublimely calm. Finally satisfied, and preparing to quit the search, the police are interrupted in their ascension of the stairs by the triumphant voice of the narrator. "Gentleman," I said at last..., I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. Bye the bye, gentleman, this--this is a very well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.]--"I may say an excellently constructed house. The walls--are you going, gentlemen?--these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. (69) No sooner had the reverberations of the striking of the cane died away, than there issued forth the howl, "a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph..., such as might have arisen...from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation." (70) The cat had completed its conquest, revealing the location of the corpse and consigning the wretch to the gallows. The final horror of the narrator, his crowning act of perversity, is reminiscent of the crazed killer of the old man in "The Tell-Tale Heart," who had succeeded in hiding his atrocity, only to betray himself in direst effect, again to the police. Later, we shall see a similar psychological imolation performed by the narrator on himself in "The Imp of the Perverse." "The Black Cat" illustrates many manifestations and vehicles which the perverse can assume. First the narrator succumbs to alcohol; then the narrators spirit of perversity, given a foothold in his psyche, causes the eventual decline in his temperament. As the story progresses, the narrator reaches the point which Poe describes: "With certain minds, under certain conditions, it [perversity] becomes absolutely irresistible...radical...primitive...." (Poe, "The Imp of the Perverse" 272) Alas, the hapless narrator cannot help himself. As mentioned previously, a traditional moralist will always be tempted to overlay his own principles on Poe's tales, in this story, expostulating the evils of drink, perhaps. And understandably, when such tenets reside at the core of one's belief structure, the temptation to perform moral judgment can be preemptory; yet Poe's system of mind deserves our efforts to comprehend his system. Certainly Poe recognized the lure of alcohol; yet he chose to examine the primitive cause of the urge, rather than submit to the prescriptions of the moralists of his time. So let us, too, seek to discern Poe's intentions . And what of this flailing narrator who possesses seemingly so little command of his life? He knows that he has violated his own vitality by removing Pluto's eye, and by later hanging the cat in the tree. He displays regret for his actions, a conscience. But what can his conscience constitute in Poe's system of morality? And for that matter, what is morality when one leaves God's intentions for man out of the picture? MORALITY AND CONSCIENCE: THE CLASH OF SPIRIT AND FLESH In Poe's fiction morality is the tension played out between the assertive, creative vitality of his narrators and the perverse, betraying, impulse to self-ruination. When a character commits evil in Poe, he has not violated God; he has violated his own spirit. In violating his own spirit, he has acted from impulses that he could not control, since his very being, as all cosmic material, has been implanted with the seed of its own annihilation. Though he acts for the reason that he should not act, he can no more defy those actions than can he defy gravity. Yet he regrets. Regret in Poe is spoken by the conscience, perhaps the author's least understood disquisition. Conscience speaks in the conclusions of "The Imp of the Perverse," "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado," "William Wilson," and "Berenice." It is disguised within the plots of "Ligeia" and "The Tell-Tale Heart." It's confession withheld from the reader, it tautens "The Man of the Crowd." So what is conscience in Poe? It is the betrayal of the self in deepest consequence, Poe's most powerful agent of the perverse. Why most powerful? Because conscience reveals the deep secret. It is the tell-tale heart that marks the ruination of many of Poe's narrators. Even when the heart will not tell, as in "The Man of the Crowd," the man is still shattered by the burden of conscience. "What is conscience, after all, but that part of the ego which regards the rest as an object which it can judge" (Hoffman 212); and in judging, what can conscience represent if not the imp of the perverse, this same aspect of ego. Since mortal man, perversely, violates his own higher spirit, conscience, also perversely, becomes the adjudicator for his violations. Thus, for many of Poe's characters, perverseness is double, violating both their higher nature and their folly. According to Poe, people wreck their lives because of impulses beyond their control. This thesis flies in the face of the moral view, which states that a conscious choice has been made by the individual to defy the will of God. But one must remember that Poe believed perversity, which corresponds to the maelstromic collapse phase of God's individuation, is so integral to human experience, that it serves as the radical cause of the events which the religious call sin. Poe would say that sin is always committed against the self, and that the commission of sin cannot always be resisted because the perverse impulse is primal. This brings to mind William Blake's assertion in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that those who control their own energies are enabled to succeed only if those energies are weak enough to be controlled by their rational powers. But in Poe, even the rational mind becomes diseased, as his deranged narrators explain so succinctly what brings them to their own ruin. GARDEN VARIETY PERVERSITY: A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFESSES Yet not all instances of perversity are so dire as those encountered by Poe's narrators. Consider the following testimonial written by a graduate student: I have a masters' thesis to write; it must be written to further my welfare, to help me better serve my fellow man, and to allow me better access to the broad highways of good fortune. The topic of the thesis interests me more than any topic I have pondered, for it involves the very centrality of existence. Assuredly, this is the day to commence, but I procrastinate. I throw a Frisbee, I open a beer, I get into my car and drive away, promising myself that I will, without fail, begin writing the thesis tomorrow. Tomorrow arrives, and with it, my desires rush to the fore to begin writing at once. But in addition, my passion for delay increases proportionately. Again I find something other than thesis writing to occupy my time. I put on a symphony, pet the neighbor's cat, visit friends, telling them of all my ideas concerning the topic of my thesis, but alas, I write nothing. The pattern continues for two years. I begin to doubt that I can even write the thesis. I give myself pep talks to awaken my initiatives; but even these, to no avail. But one day I am fortunate to learn through the example of a friend that I possess the ability to direct segments of my own life. Everything comes vividly into focus. I had relinquished to the Imp of the Perverse areas of my life over which I must exert more control. I plan a Western vacation with another friend, but I will allow myself to go only if the thesis has been completed. First I must help him paint his parents' house so that we can afford to go. All day in the East Texas heat, we paint. All night I type. This goes on for five days. We finish the house; I complete the thesis with practically no sleep. The thesis goes to the Major professor with the ridiculous suggestion that maybe it's good enough to go to the other readers just like it is. The Major professor says we'll wait and see about that. In three days he concurs, and the Western vacation begins. What cause for celebration! In procrastination, I fall victim to perversity, another self which stymies my efforts to move forward. In creating my way out of the trap, I indulge in the illusion that I have advanced myself. Meanwhile, the Imp of the Perverse shifts to other areas of my life. Not conquered, just momentarily subverted. This illustration conveyed by the graduate student completely paralyzed in his attempts to begin his thesis, seems diminutive when set beside the dilemmas of the protagonists of Poe's tales. Most of his characters cannot learn from recognition scenes because they are locked into circumstances beyond the control that can be exerted by the individual will. They do reflect on the calamities which befall them, only they are so alienated from themselves that they actually forfeit their self-control. Again, many of Poe's characters are extensions of the author's own struggles. Poe felt himself victimized by the world. It had, after all, taken away from him every important woman in his life; it had robbed him of identity with parents, and of his share of the estate of John Allan. How ironic that this genius, who could so masterfully arrange his short stories, invented characters who could not bring order to their own lives! THE COMPULSION TO PERVERSENESS II: "THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE" Poe's story "The Imp of the Perverse" opens in the style of an essay, describing "the prima mobilia of the human soul," a propensity which has been ignored by phrenologists and moralists, "although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment." (Poe 271) The sentiment thus described as "perverseness" is subsequently delineated in three examples: The first involves a speaker's tantalizing an audience by circumlocution, fully aware that he displeases, and though intending to please, he opts to indulge the "uncontrollable longing" to displease. (272-73) After its July, 1945 publication of "The Imp...," Poe spoke to open the Lyceum season on October 16. One cannot help wondering whether Poe's self-effacing introduction and his reading of the whole of "Al Aaraaf" to an audience of Bostonians did not represent enactment of this episode from his story. (Silverman 267) The second example is much like that of the graduate student cited earlier. Procrastination as an agency of the perverse also seems to have plagued Poe before the Lyceum reading, since he had promised to read a new poem, which he never wrote, then disappointed with the lengthy and unsuccessful poem from his youth. In contrast to the success of the graduate student in overcoming his perverse inclination, the "chanticleer-ghost" petrifies the victim in Poe's illustration, until the striking of the hour designating that alas, "it is too late." (Poe 273) The third example places the victim on the brink of a precipice, where he begins to yearn for the "delight" in the horror of a "rushing annihilation" from such a height. What "would be our sensations?" (273) The narrator points out that it is the very loathsomeness and ghastliness of such a death which causes one to most vividly desire it. "If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed." (Poe 274) A similar account can be found on the Isle of Tsalal in Poe's novel, the Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, when the narrator is saved from a fall from a steep cliff only by the arms of Peters. Next, the reader discovers that he reads not an essay, but a tale of horror from a young man who has fallen victim to the spirit of perverseness he had so well portrayed. One might also wonder if Poe had John Allan in mind when he formulated the plot for this episode. The narrator devises a scheme that will secure his fortune from his benefactor-to-be. He poisons the wax of a candle and exchanges it for the candle at his benefactor's bedside. Of course the benefactor suffocates; the evidence burns away; the taper is disposed of. The scheme is a success, as the crime goes undetected. For a number of years the narrator enjoys his good fortune. But he begins to mutter to himself, "I am safe," and finally, "I am safe--I am safe--if I be not fool enough to make open confession." At this suggestion, the narrator confronts his own double, his perverse self who reveals him "as the very ghost of him I had murdered...." (Poe 275) The narrator feels the pangs of suffocation, as if it were he who is now being poisoned. Finally, completely dominated by his perverse spirit, the narrator rushes madly through the heavily populated avenues to confess his crime to the authorities. He relates all that is needed to convict him of his crime, then falls "prostrate in a swoon." (275) Those whom Poe satirizes in "Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral" would likely find a moral in "The Imp..." They would avow that the narrator's guilt caused the confession. He was a bad egg, and, sonny boy, if you don't want to end up like him, you won't kill people. Moralists would completely ignore the narrator's explicit explanation of perversity at the story's outset, to insist that Poe tells herein a tale entailing traditional morality. It seems to this writer that we must give Poe credit for knowing what he was doing. If he presents a narrative in illustration of human perversity, the reader should take him at his word. But what of his confession? Is this not the voice of his conscience? Yes, assuredly, his confession is the utterance of conscience, but it is conscience in Poe's scheme, an agent of the perverse, revealing the "deep secret," the seed of annihilation residing in the human breast. It is not conscience which brings the individual into submission to a moral code. HISTORICAL AND SOCIETAL PERVERSENESS So just what is this perverse spirit which Poe so succinctly describes in his stories? Is the spirit only to be found in the fertile imagination of the author, or, does perversity apply to everyday life? Poe would, and did declare that perversity is a fundamental force which permeates human existence. If this be true, then how odd that humanity seems so unaware of its presence! The subject of perversity is seldom discoursed. Thus, if perversity indeed permeates existence, it must be either consciously ignored, or at work on the subconscious mind. Perhaps Edgar Poe was better in touch with this dark side of psyche precisely because his subconscious mind lay so close to his waking consciousness. But let us examine "mere household events" for examples of perversity in action. Many of those whom society calls criminals return to the scene of their respective crimes, drawn there as if by some magnetic force. We could postulate, if we were conventional moralists, that criminals return to the crime scene because they wish to subject themselves to the exciting possibility of Divine retribution. But how much more satisfactory is the Poesque explanation. The criminal returns because he might get caught, because in returning,, he could utterly ruin his life. Criminal investigators oblige the criminal by watching crime scenes, sometimes for months, in hope that the stake-out will cough up yet another suspect. And it is time well spent. In addition, many seemingly mundane choices of everyday life are choices so obviously dangerous or damaging to the organism, whether it be the third piece of buttermilk pie or passing vehicles on a curve or smoking cigarettes or precariously balancing a ladder or abusing drugs or engaging in radical sports. And these commonplace activities can be extended to interpersonal indiscretions such as arrogance or rudeness or dishonesty or insensitivity. How often we shake our heads at the tomfoolery of some Jack who has proven to be his own worst enemy. How easily we can see, especially in others, the irrationality of the perverse at work, but without calling it by name or admitting its primal origins. And how seldom do we find individuals who own up to the tomfoolery of their own actions and behavior, also abundantly perverse. Not only is perversity easily discernible in individuals, it also extends to cultural behavior and societal conditioning exhibited by members of the crowd. Civilizations tend to rise on the wings of their own creativity, then plummet in the corruption of their own perversity. And though we look outside ourselves for someone to blame, our own culture takes corruption from perversity as well. Timothy McVeighs and Lee Harvey Oswalds do not spring forth from their mothers' wombs ready to murder presidents or to build fertilizer bombs to blow up federal buildings. They feed from perverse elements of our culture. We hold them responsible as individuals, but what of the propagandists and gun associations and intelligence agencies and purveyors of hate who help bring their hideous acts to fruition? How easy it is for such poisonous elements to subvert those of weak imagination. In fact, rational thought, isolated from the workings of the imagination, leads from nowhere to nowhere. It actually represents a perversion of thought which causes individuals and societies to do themselves harm. Poe knew that, alone, rationality is a severe limitation to thought. Though he employed rational thought in his own discourse, he infused it with his imaginative and intuitive genius; yet the ability to accomplish a great creation is not enough. What thoughtful person will deny that Western man, in his prolific creative endeavors, has adopted the rationale of profitability, thus setting in motion his perverse specter, which from time to time, menacingly rears its head, revealing his own failure to apply imaginative genius to his creative accomplishments? CONCLUSION Perhaps the conditions which I described in the preceding paragraphs illustrate that creativity and perversity do, as Poe declared, walk hand-in-hand, just as do the attraction and repulsion motions of the universe. Consider the possibility that man's prolific creative genius necessarily must be just as abundantly perverse. Certainly this antipodality of action and reaction seems to follow the basic laws of Newton, as well as the oscillations manifested throughout the universe. But what prevents the individual from recognizing his own perversity in Poe's terms, as a primal force governing many of the activities of psyche? After Toby's debacle, I would not bet the devil my head, but could it be our own cultural conditioning which blinds us to this truth which Poe proclaimed as self-evident? Must we deliberately shed the accouterments of convention to travel Poe's intellect? Yes, yes, emphatically, yes. It is also helpful to consider that Poe performed his search very much from the Romantic tradition and in the American spirit. He searched individually, passionately, but entirely alone. Yet his quest for transcendence to the unity of the godhead and his profound postulates governing the spiritual universe rarefied him from his literary and social compatriots, and even from many modern readers. Readers of Poe's time and of ours have much to unlearn before they can hope to decode his macabre. In addition, Poe's psychological theory, which represents the mind's compulsion to kill the body, drew from the society of his time the author's own imps of the perverse, most notably the Reverend Rufus W. Griswold , who believed Poe to be demented. Yet how could Griswold be expected to grasp Poe's belief in a spiritually governed universe where God is manifest in his own creation. How could he comprehend Poe's psychic landscape, where the mind wars against the body to rejoin his higher spirit within God. Griswold recoiled. Though we disparage his onslaught of Poe's reputation--his alteration of letters and other records of fact, we can also perceive the Reverend's desperation. He was bright enough to see what Poe undertook, and was scared silly. Even today we find much judgementiveness in Poe scholarship, a calculated distancing of the critic from the "danger zone." So what we are undertaking here, in these several essays, is Poe's psychal study of man, an examination of the seasons of intellect, body and spirit, through which he believed that we all cycle. And these essays also seek to portray Poe's creative spirit. Though hyper-aware of his own tendency to perversity, what creative impetus must have been requisite for Edgar Poe to have penned poems and stories which so closely mirror the psychic patterns of his own mind! "For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not--and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world...a series of mere household events....[T]hese events have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed me....[P]erhaps...some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own...will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects." Tomorrow the narrator will be executed for the brutal murder of his wife. As he awaits his own death, he finds it necessary to record the events which seduced him into murder and informed the police of his crime. From infancy, the narrator had been noted for his "docility and humanity of... disposition." His tenderness of heart made him "...the jest of [his] companions. [He] was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by [his] parents with a great variety of pets." He married at an early age, and like the narrator, his wife had a similar love for animals. They had "birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. Pluto, the cat, was "a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree." As the narrator remembers Pluto, he also remembers something that his wife once said about all black cats being witches in disguise according to "some ancient popular notion." He never really believed she was serious about this point, and he is not quite sure why he remembers it now. Out of all the pets, Pluto was his favorite. He "alone fed him, and he attended [him] wherever he went about the house. It was even with great difficulty that [he] could prevent [the cat] from following [him] through the streets." Their friendship lasted for several years until the man's temperament began to change. He grew, "day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others." He cursed at his wife, and eventually he "offered her personal violence." His pets began to feel the change in his disposition--a change brought about by the "Fiend Intemperance [lack of control in consuming alcohol]." "One night, returning home, much intoxicated...[he] fancied that the cat avoided [his] presence." He grabbed Pluto, who out of fear, "inflicted a slight wound upon [his owner's] hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed [the man]." He took a penknife from his waistcoat pocket, "and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!" When morning came, the narrator saw what he had done to the poor creature on the previous night. "The socket of the lost eye presented...a frightful appearance...." The narrator unable to deal with the results of his own actions, "soon drown in wine all memory of the deed." "In the meantime, the cat slowly recovered. He went about the house as usual, but as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at [the narrator's] approach." At first the man was somewhat grieved by the cat's actions; however, this feeling turned into irritation. "And then came, as if to [his] final and irrevocable overthrow the spirit of PERVERSENESS. "One morning, in cold blood, [the narrator] slipped a noose about [Pluto's] neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;--hung it with the tears streaming from [his] eyes, and with the bitterest remorse of [his] heart;--hung it because he knew that [the cat] had loved [him], and because [he] felt it had given [him] no reason of offence;--hung it because [he] knew that in so doing [he] was committing a sin--a deadly sin that would so jeopardize [his] immortal soul as to place it--if such a thing were possible--even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God." "On the night of the day on which this most cruel deed was done, [the narrator] was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire....The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that [his] wife, a servant, and [himself], made [their] escape....[His] entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and [he] resigned himself thenceforward to despair." "On the day succeeding the fire, [he] visited the ruins. The walls with one exception had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall...against which had rested the head of [his] bed....About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention....[U]pon the white surface...as if graven in bas-relief...[was] the figure of a gigantic cat...[with] a rope about [its] neck." "When [the narrator] first beheld this apparition...[his] wonder and terror were extreme.... [Then he remembered that] the cat...had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd--by someone of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into [his] chamber...with the view of arousing [the narrator] from sleep. The falling of the other walls had compressed the victim of [the man's cruel deed] into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime...with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass...[had created the hideous image in the wall]." For months, the man could not forget the gigantic image of the cat in the wall. It was during this time that he actually began to regret the loss of his cat Pluto, and he began to look for a similar pet to take the cat's place. "One night as [the narrator sat in a tavern in a drunken stupor], [his] attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, [sitting on a large container] of gin or of rum...." He approached this object, and touched it. He was surprised to discover that "it was a black cat--a very large one--fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast." The cat responded by purring loudly, and the narrator talked to the owner of the tavern about purchasing the cat; however, "this person made no claim to it--knew nothing of it--had never seen it before." When the man left the tavern, the cat accompanied him home. "When it reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with [his] wife. Much to the narrator's surprise, he "...soon found a dislike to [the cat] arising within [him]." As time passed these feelings turned to hatred of the cat. He began to avoid it out of a sense "of shame, and the remembrance of [his] former deed of cruelty....What added to [his] hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after [he] brought it home, that, like Pluto, it had also been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to [his] wife...." The more that the narrator avoided the cat, the more it seemed to follow him. "Whenever [he] sat, [the cat] would crouch beneath [his] chair, or spring upon [his] knees, covering [him] with its loathsome caresses. If [he] arose to walk it would get between [his] feet and thus nearly throw [him] down. or fastening its long and sharp claws in [his clothing], clamber, in this manner, to [his] breast." The man longed to destroy the cat, but refrained from doing so "partly by a memory of [his] former crime, but chiefly...by an absolute dread of the beast. This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil--and yet [the man] was at a loss how otherwise to define it...." More than once his wife had called his attention to the splotch of white on this cat's chest "...which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one [he] had destroyed." Slowly, over a period of time, this indefinite splotch of white began to take the shape of an object that terrified the narrator. This ghastly shape was that "of the GALLOWS!--oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime--of Agony and of Death!" "...[N]either by day nor by night ...[could the narrator find] the blessing of rest any more." During the day, the cat would never leave the man's side, and at night, he would wake up "...from dreams of unutterable fear to find the hot breath of the thing upon [his] face, and its vast weight--an incarnate nightmare that [he] had no power to shake off--incumbent eternally upon [his] heart! "Beneath the pressure of torments such as these the feeble remnant of the good within [him] succumbed. Evil thoughts became [his] sole intimates--the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of [his] usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind...." "One day [his wife] accompanied [him], upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which [their] poverty compelled [them] to inhabit. The cat followed [the narrator] down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing [him] headlong, exasperated [him] to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting in [his] wrath the childish dread which had hitherto stayed [his] hand, [the narrator] aimed a blow at the animal, which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal if it had descended as [he] had wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of [his] wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, [the narrator] withdrew [his] arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan." The next step was to conceal the body. Many thoughts passed through the man's mind. He thought about cutting the corpse into small pieces, and destroying them by fire. Maybe he could dig a grave for the body in the cellar floor; or possibly, he could cast the corpse into the well in the yard. The narrator even thought about packing his wife's body into a box as if it were merchandise, and getting a porter to remove it from the house. Finally, after much deliberation, the narrator knew that he had found the perfect solution. He would "...wall [the body] up in the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages [were] recorded to have walled up their victims." The cellar was well-adapted for a purpose such as this. "Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up and made to resemble the rest of the cellar." The narrator knew that he "...could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious." "By means of a crowbar [the narrator] easily dislodged the bricks, and...carefully deposited the body against the inner wall...." He then "...relaid the whole structure as it originally stood." Afterwards, he "...prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this [he] very carefully went over the new brick-work....The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed." The narrator cleaned up the mess with "the minutest care." His next step was to look for the cat. The man had "firmly resolved to put it to death." However, the cat must have been frightened by the man's previous actions, and it was now nowhere to be found. "It did not make its appearance during the night; and thus for one night, at least since its introduction into the house, [the narrator] soundly and tranquilly slept; [yes], slept even with the burden of murder upon [his] soul." Three days passed, and still there was no sight of the cat. A few inquiries had been made about the narrator's wife, but he had easily answered those. "Even a search had been instituted--but of course nothing was to be discovered. Upon the fourth day...the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises....They left no nook or corner unexplored....[F]or the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar....The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. [The narrator] burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of [his] guiltlessness." "Gentlemen," [the narrator said], as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this--this is a very well-constructed house...I may say an excellently well-constructed house. These walls--are you going, gentlemen?--these walls are solidly put together...." At this point, the narrator "...rapped heavily with a cane which [he] held in [his] hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of [his wife]....No sooner had the reverberation of [his] blows sunk into silence, than [he] was answered by a voice from within the tomb!--by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream...a howl--a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph...." "Swooning, [the narrator] staggered to the opposite [side of the cellar]." The police began tearing down the wall. There before all, stood "...the corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore....Upon its head...sat the [cat], the hideous beast whose craft had seduced [the man] into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned [him] to the hangman. [He] had walled the monster up within the tomb." Setting As the story begins, the narrator is in jail awaiting his execution, which will occur on the following day, for the brutal murder of his wife. At that point, the rest of the story is told in flashback, as the narrator pens "...the most wild, yet homely narrative...[whose] events have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed [him]." Characters Although several characters are mentioned in this story, the true focus lies upon the nameless narrator, who is known for his "...docility and humanity of ...disposition. His tenderness of heart...[made him] the jest of [his] companions." He was especially fond of animals, and he was pleased to find a similar fondness for pets in his wife. They had many pets including "...birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat." The cat was a large, beautiful animal who was entirely black. Pluto, as he was called, was the narrator's favorite pet. He alone fed him, and Pluto followed the narrator wherever he went. Occasionally, his wife would refer to an old superstitious belief that "...all black cats [were] witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point...." Point of View Poe writes this story from the perspective of the narrator, a man whose "...temperament and character [are transformed] through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance [alcohol]." Telling the story from the first person point of view (a perspective that Poe used quite frequently), intensifies the effect of moral shock and horror. Once again, the reader is invited (as was the case in both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado") to delve into the inner workings of the dark side of the mind. Style and Interpretation "'The Black Cat' is one of the most powerful of Poe's stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust" (Quinn 395). Poe constructed this story in such a way that the events of the tale remain somewhat ambiguous. As the narrator begins to recount the occurrences that "...have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed [him]," he reminds the reader that maybe "...some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than [his] own," will perceive "...nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects." As the narrator begins to tell his story (flashback), the reader discovers that the man's personality had undergone a drastic transformation which he attributes to his abuse of alcohol and the perverse side of his nature, which the alcohol seemed to evoke. The reader also discovers (with the introduction of Pluto into the story) that the narrator is superstitious, as he recounts that his wife made "...frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, [that] all black cats [are] witches in disguise." Even though the narrator denies this (much as the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" denies that he or she is insane), the reader becomes increasingly aware of his superstitious belief as the story progresses. Superstition (as well as the popular notion to which the man's wife refers) has it that Satan and witches assume the form of black cats. For those who believe, they are symbols of bad luck, death, sorcery, witchcraft, and the spirits of the dead. Appropriately, the narrator calls his cat, Pluto, who in Greek and Roman mythology was the god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld (symbolism). As in other Poe stories ( "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Gold Bug"), biting and mutilation appear. The narrator of "The Black Cat" first becomes annoyed when Pluto "inflicted a slight wound upon [the] hand with his teeth." After he is bitten by the cat, the narrator cuts out its eye. Poe relates "eyes" and "teeth" in their single capacity to take in or to incorporate objects. This dread of being consumed often leads the narrator to destroy who or what he fears (Silverman 207). Poe's pronounced use of foreshadowing leads the reader from one event to the next ("one night," "one morning," "on the night of the day," etc.). Within the first few paragraphs of the story, the narrator foreshadows that he will violently harm his wife ("At length, I even offered her personal violence."). However, are the events of the story, as the narrator suggests, based upon "...an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effect," or are they indeed caused by the supernatural? By using, three main events in this story (the apparition of the first cat upon the burned wall, the appearance of the gallowslike pattern upon the chest of the second cat, and the discovery of the second cat behind the cellar wall), a convincing case can be presented for both sides. While making a case for the logical as well as the supernatural, one must remember the state of mind of the narrator. All events are described for the reader by an alcoholic who has a distorted view of reality. The narrator goes to great lengths to scientifically explain the apparition of the cat in the wall; however, the chain of events that he re-creates in his mind are so highly coincidental that an explanation relying on the supernatural may be easier to accept. Once again, the reader wonders if the narrator's perceptions can be believed as he describes the gallowslike pattern upon the chest of the second cat. Maybe what he sees is just a hallucination of a tormented mind. The markings of an adult cat surely would not change that much, unless maybe the pattern was not part of the animal's fur, but only a substance on its surface which, with time, could wear off and disappear (a substance such as plaster?). Afterall, the second cat is also missing an eye. Poe is very careful to avoid stating if it is the same eye of which Pluto was deprived. Are there really two cats in this story, or did Pluto (possibly "a witch in disguise") survive, and return for retribution. Of all the incidents, the discovery of the cat (first or second) behind the cellar wall is the easiest to believe. The cat was frightened by the man, and logically, sought shelter. What is somewhat strange is the fact that the police searched the cellar several times, and not one time did the cat make a sound. It was not until the narrator rapped heavily with a cane upon the wall, that the cat responded. Was it a series of natural causes and effects, or was it what the narrator described? "Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb." Theme "The Black Cat" is Poe's second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt (the first being "The Tell-Tale Heart"); however, this story does not deal with premeditated murder. The reader is told that the narrator appears to be a happily married man, who has always been exceedingly kind and gentle. He attributes his downfall to the "Fiend Intemperance" and "the spirit of perverseness." Perverseness, he believes, is "...one of the primitive impulses of the human heart." "Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?" Perverseness provides the rationale for otherwise unjustifiable acts, such as killing the first cat or rapping with his cane upon the plastered-up wall behind which stood his wife's corpse "...already greatly decayed and clotted with gore." We might argue that what the narrator calls "perverseness" is actually conscience. Guilt about his alcoholism seems to the narrator the "perverseness" which causes him to maim and kill the first cat. Guilt about those actions indirectly leads to the murder of his wife who had shown him the gallows on the second cat's breast. The disclosure of the crime, as in "The Tell-Tale Heart," is caused by a warped sense of triumph and the conscience of the murderer. What makes this story different from "The Tell-Tale Heart" is that Poe has added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural. Now the story has an added twist as the narrator hopes that the reader, like himself, will be convinced that these events were not "...an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects." [See Style and Interpretation] The Black Cat First Publication: "The Black Cat" was first published in the United States Saturday Post, which was a temporary title substitution for The Saturday Evening Post, on August 19, 1843. It was written in late 1842. Subsequent Publication: "The Black Cat" was republished in Tales (1845), The Pictorial National Library (November, 1848), and was translated to French by Isabelle Meunier in la Democratie pacifique in the January 27, 1847 edition. Genre: "The Black Cat" is a peverse grotesque short story. Summary: The narrator of the story tells a tale of horror and murder from a prison cell. A lover of domestic animals, the narrator had had many differnt pets and had lived comfortably in a house with his pets and his wife. Soon, mostly because of the negative effects of alcohol, he began to despise the pets. Previously his favorite (because of its affection), a large black cat named Pluto eventually copied and seemed to mock the narrator so much that the narrator gouged out its eye and hung the cat. That night his house burned down and left a perfect bas relief of a cat with a noose around its neck in the one unburnt piece of plaster in the house. Soon the author wanted company of another cat and found one identical to Pluto, save for a large white patch of hair on its chest. The white patch eventually transformed from an nondescript patch to a gallows as the narrator again becomes increasingly loathful of the cat. One day the cat triped the narrator in the cellar, and the narrator brandishing an axe, swung it to kill the cat. His wife blocked the blow; and, in a rage, the narrator planted the axe in her skull. He walled up his wife in the cellar and, and without the disappeared cat to bother him, finally had a good night's sleep--even with the murder on his mind. Police came to investigate but they found nothing. They came back four days after the murder and the narrator took them to the exact place where he had killed his wife. While he is bragging to the police about the solidity of the walls in which his wife is entombed, a loud shriek alerts the police to something behind the wall. The narrator had walled up his cat along with his dead wife. "'The Black Cat' is a story of 'orthodox' witchcraft; the sudden appearance of the second cat from nowhere, the slow growth of the white marking, and the murder of the wife after the animal brushed against the protagonist on the stairs are touches of the supernatural" (Mabbot 848). Importance of the work: "The Black Cat" combines "several themes that fascinated Poe--reincarnation, perversity, and retribution" (Mabbot 847). It is partially related to "The Tell-tale Heart" because the narrator is so afflicted with perversity. Poe was able to create an entirely seperate person from himself for this story. "Poe's narrators possess a character and consciousness distinct from their creator--they speak their own thoughts and are the dupes of their own passions"( Hammond 27). Poe's favorite animal was the cat, and he had a black one named Catarina. Poe also had a drinking problem that caused him to rage. Although he is not the narrator, he feared for Maria and Virginia Clemm when alcohol caused him to become violent. DO BLACK CATS CAUSE BAD LUCK? by Mark Levin What is superstition? According to The Little Oxford Dictionary, superstition is "belief in the existence or power of the supernatural; irrational fear of the unknown; a religion or practice based on such tendencies; widely held but wrong idea." Let us examine that definition in depth. First, there is "belief in the existence or power of the supernatural". This means that there is believed to be some force that can influence the events on the Earth. Second, there is "irrational fear of the unknown." This has been endemic to the human race since the early days when a cave man did not know if that cave was safe to enter or if he would be attacked by a bear. Third, "a religion or practice based on such tendencies." This is the belief that a charm or talisman, such as throwing salt or hanging a horseshoe over the doorway, can affect the aforementioned supernatural force. Finally, there is a "widely held but wrong idea." This is a belief that is believed only because everyone else believes. It may be wrong, it may be preposterous, but all the other people think it is right and you believe it too. Why do people believe in something that can be scientifically proven wrong? They may want a simple explanation for a coincidence. For example, a woman plants a tree in her yard and the weather is warm for the rest of the month. She reasons that planting trees causes warm weather. That is a simple, obvious conclusion. A weatherman will give a long, confusing explanation such as "Various meteorological factors caused displacement of the cold front." The woman will believe her own explanation because it is simple and easily understood. Once one person believes this conclusion, others will believe too. Perhaps the woman will be gossiping with some friends, and she mentions her tree superstition. They tell others and soon the whole town believes that trees cause warm weather. Some examples of common, everyday superstition include the belief that the number 13 is unlucky, that walking under a ladder will bring bad luck, and that a black cat crossing your path can affect your luck. Belief that black cats affect your luck goes far back in time. One king of England, Charles I, owned a black cat. His fear of losing it was so great that he had it guarded. The day after it fell ill and died, he was arrested (Radford 1949, 40). Black cats were often witches in disguise or witches' familiars (Potter 1983, 29). There were also many cat charms relating to ships and the sea. Fishermen's wives would keep a black cat at home to prevent disaster at sea, consequently the cats became very valuable and were often stolen. If a cat ran ahead of a sailor to the pier that would bring good luck, but if the cat crossed his path it means bad luck. For luck, cats were often kept on board ships. If a sailor was approached by the ship's cat it meant good luck, but if the cat only came halfway and went away again it meant bad luck. The worst possible cat-related act, guaranteed to raise a storm and bring bad luck of all sorts, was to throw the cat overboard (Radford 1949, 40). Cat superstitions were also common in medicine. Fur and blood drawn from various parts of the cat's anatomy cured everything from shingles to St. Anthony's Fire (Radford 1949, 40). All of these superstitions today boil down to "Black cats cause bad luck." A cat crossing your path will adversely affect your luck. This can easily be verified or disproven with only a person, a cat, and a situation that can be affected by luck. I performed an experiment to test a black cat's effect on luck. Two people tried their luck at guessing computer-generated random numbers. Their paths were then crossed by a cat and then they guessed more numbers. To ensure that the luck effects were only caused by black cats, their paths were also crossed by a white cat. The source of random numbers was a random number generator that I wrote in True Basic 2.6, a BASIC programming language for Macintosh computers. The random number, between 0 and 1, is calculated by factors including the date and time. The program's main loop appears below. The first line of the program states that the program runs 50 times, to simulate 50 coin tosses. The computer requests that the user enter "h" or "t", as in "tails" or "heads" in a coin toss. Then a random number between 0 and 1 is picked. If the number is greater than one half (.5) then it counts as tails. If the number is less than one half it counts as tails.The computer compares the user's guess to its random choice. If the user was right then the computer adds 1 to its tally of correct scores. After 50 coin tosses the computer prints out the final percentage correct. Each person was tested 5 times and the results averaged, to minimize statistical errors. The situation of the actual path-cross was a hallway with 2 doorways on opposite sides. As the subject walked down the hallway the cat ran out of one doorway and into the other. The above diagram is a floor plan of the area in which the test subject encountered a cat. The human began on the left. As he walked down the hall, the cat was released in alcove A. The cat walked or ran across the human's path. The cat then proceeded into alcove B across the hall. The human continued to the computer room C.The subject then ran the luck program. The program was run 5 times immediately. The results were entered into a series of charts. Luck For Subject Alone is a chart of the subject's luck when his path was not crossed by any cats. Luck for White Cat is a chart of when the subject's path was crossed by a white cat. Luck for Black Cat is a graph of the subject's luck when his path was crossed by a black cat. The lower line in each chart is the lowest percentage that a subject received. The upper line is the highest percentage that the subject received. The center line is the actual percentage of coin flips correct. The first subject, according to "Luck for Subject Alone", scored between 56% and 44% for all his tries. The percentages are near the upper range for all tries but the last. 1 out of 5 tries is at the lower range. The average of his tries was 52%: slightly above the statistical prediction of 50%. When his path was crossed by a white cat, his luck first decreased to 36%. This is a great drop taken by itself, but all the other 4 were near or at the top. The average percentage for a white cat was 49.2%, 2.8% below the subject's average and .8% below the statistical prediction. However, 3 out of 5 tries are not outside the original range. They are within the subject's average percentage range, but they are only slight drops from the statistical average of 50%. The subject's luck was decreased according to a random factor, not according to the cat's path-crossing. These are the cats used in the experiment. These results appear to agree with the superstition, even for the wrong cat color. I ran the test a second time to see if the white cat's results could be repeated. This time the results (see "Luck for second white cat crossing") were different. The subject's luck started out high, at 56%. Then it peaked at 58%. It then dropped to the lowest point, 40%, and went up through 48% and 50%. These percentages are higher than the drop observed earlier. The drop to 36% can now be seen as a random error, not related in any way to the white cat. If the cat truly was capable of decreasing luck, the subject's luck would have repeated the decline. The black cat, surprisingly, caused less of a drop than the white cat. The black cat lowered the minimum percentage to 40%. The luck average was 47.2%. This range is still within the percentage range of the unaffected luck. The luck has not descended out of the average range of the subject. The luck of the second subject was slightly different. His percentages were 40-52%, averaging 46.8%. When his path was crossed by a white cat, his success rate became 40-60%, averaging 49.6%. The white cat caused a gain in luck! The black cat caused an expansion in luck, to 36-56%. Both results go directly against the old superstition. If black cats are unlucky, then why did the subject's luck increase? One possibility is the corollary superstition that a black cat running away from you is bad luck whereas a black cat approaching you is good. But neither applies here. The cats crossed the subject's path at nearly a right angle. The cat did not move towards the subject or away from him. Secondly, the subject's luck range did not simple shift upward, it expanded. The minimum was lowered and the maximum was raised.The possibility for bad luck was there, but so was the possibility for good luck. This remains unexplained by the superstition. In conclusion, neither cat produced a drastic change in the subject's luck. True, the subject's luck declined slightly, but the change was not great enough to leave the subject's average luck range. There are several objections that believers could raise. It could be said that the cat affects not guessing power but fortune and misfortune in real-life situations. I own a black cat, and although she has crossed my path hundreds of times, I see no degradation in my schoolwork or social life. It could be said that the computer's brain is somehow beyond the cat's influence. I see no difference between an object that could land on one of 2 sides and a stream of electrons that could end in one of 2 states. Another argument is that the stakes must be raised so that there is a disadvantage to losing. This implies the existence of a malevolent being, manifested in cats, whose reason for existence is to deny people fortune. But that is ridiculous. The idea that black cats cause bad luck is false. Cats do not affect the luck of anyone whose path has been crossed.

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