The Black Cat Character Analysis

A loyal companion, named Pluto, whom the narrator loves but begins to mistreat when his cruel humor intensifies—the narrator gouges out Pluto's eye and then hangs the cat from a tree. After its death, the cat seems to take on a supernatural existence in the double that the narrator stumbles upon at a den of disrepute. Provoked by the narrator’s guilt and paranoia, the cat appears to return in the body of a doppelganger, this time with a white patch on his breast in the shape of a gallows, warning the narrator of his fate. The cat becomes a symbol of the narrator’s delusional, altered state.