Poe's Stories: The Black Cat Summary & Analysis

The narrator of "The Black Cat" begins by saying that we probably won’t believe what he is about to tell us. But he assures us that he is not mad, and because he is about to die the next day, he wants to recount to us these “household events” that have caused so much terror. He suspects that to some people, the events will seem commonplace, and their horror will be explained away with logic and science.

The narrator of "The Black Cat" tells us of his boyhood, which was easy. He had a particular love of animals and had a lot of pets and this love only increased into adulthood. He thinks there is something in the loyalty and unselfishness of a dog that you can’t get from a man. But the narrator did marry, and was lucky to find a wife who appreciated his love of pets, and filled their house with a host of them, including a black cat.

This cat was unusually large and intelligent. The narrator of "The Black Cat" remembers how his wife used to talk about the superstition that black cats are all witches in disguise, but he assures us that this is unimportant to the story. He just remembers the detail. Anyway, the cat’s name was Pluto and became a favorite of the narrator, following him everywhere. This special bond lasted several years.

Meanwhile, though, the mood of the narrator of "The Black Cat" became progressively worse. He drank a lot and suffered from bouts of very bad temper, in which he even lost patience with the animals, and even with Pluto. One night, drunk, the narrator returned home, and imagined that Pluto was avoiding him. This sent him into a fit of rage, and, he is ashamed to write it, he attacked the cat and gouged out one of his eyes with a quill pen.

In the morning, the narrator of "The Black Cat" felt horrible about the cruel act. The cat’s eye socket healed, but he now knew to avoid the narrator and their bond was lost. At first, this loss saddens the narrator but that feeling of regret gives way to anger and perverseness. He explains this word, perverse. It is a natural phenomenon in human beings, to do the thing that one knows is wrong just because it is wrong. It is this phenomenon that the narrator uses to explain his attack on the animal, and in the spirit of perverseness, he also commits a further act, and hangs the cat from a tree. He cried as he did it. He knows that this sin places him beyond the reach of mercy.

That very night, the narrator of "The Black Cat" and his wife were awoken by the sound of flames. The house was on fire. They escaped but they saw all their possessions go up in smoke. The narrator resigned himself to despair. He says that he does not try to prove a series of causes and effects but that he must relate a chain of facts. He went back to the house the day after the fire and sees that all the walls have caved in except for one. It is the part of wall above the head of the bed, and now has a crowd of people around it. Going closer, the narrator realizes that within the wall, there is a shape in relief, of the murdered cat.

The narrator of "The Black Cat" tries to logically explain how it could have happened. The cat must have been thrown into the window when people saw the flames and gotten stuck to the recently plastered wall and been preserved there by the compression of the other walls and the substance of the plaster. But though the narrator believes he has explained the incident, he still gets terribly paranoid about seeing the vision again. He gets an urge to find a replacement animal.

One day, in a den of disrepute, the narrator of "The Black Cat" suddenly spots a cat atop a barrel of alcohol he’s been staring at. The cat is large and looks almost exactly like Pluto apart from a white patch on its breast. The narrator starts petting it and finds it very responsive to his touch. Soon, the cat is very attached to the narrator and won’t let him leave without him. He takes it home, and soon the cat becomes a favorite of the narrator’s wife, but, much to his surprise, the narrator finds a loathing growing within himself for the animal’s unwavering affection.

The narrator of "The Black Cat" starts to avoid the creature, partly out of this hatred but also from shame at the way he had treated his last cat. He also hates a particular coincidental feature of the cat: that it too only has one eye, though this only endears the cat to his wife. As the narrator’s loathing for the cat increases, so does the cat’s affection and it springs up on the narrator unawares, looking to be petted, attaching itself with its claws. The narrator, at these moments, wishes he could destroy the animal, but stops himself because of the traumatic memory of Pluto but mostly because of his dread of the new cat.

The narrator of "The Black Cat" tries to explain that this dread is not because of the apparent evil of the beast, but of the strange transformation of the patch of white on the cat’s breast into the shape of a gallows – it is merely a cat, yet it is his most haunting image, and has caused him somehow to be writing from “this felon’s cell.” The image of the gallows terrifies the narrator. He mourns that such a beast can get the better of a man like him, “made in the image of a High God.” Now he can get no rest, because the cat is all over him in the day time and the nights are filled with bad dreams.

In this state of permanent torture, all the goodness that the narrator of "The Black Cat" had in his heart has disappeared. His evil instincts take over, and even his wife is feeling his fury. One day, they go to visit their old house on an errand, and when the narrator sees the new cat has followed him he swings an axe at it, but his wife stops his arm. In a rage, he strikes his wife in the head with the axe and kills her. His mind turns immediately to how to dispose of the body. He considers cutting it up, digging a grave in the cellar, but decides that the best way is to hide the body in the wall of the cellar.

The plan works. The narrator of the "Black Cat" removes the bricks covering the fireplace, and puts the body in and covers it again. He works hard to replace the wall and recreate the scene just as it was and in the end is satisfied that nothing is amiss. Then the narrator determines to find the cat so that he can at last rid himself of its presence, but he finds it absent for the first time. The sense of relief is extreme. The cat doesn’t appear for the whole night and for the first time since its arrival, even with the murder of his wife on his hands, the narrator sleeps soundly. For three more days, this bliss continues.

On the fourth day, some policemen arrive to search the property, but knowing that his stowing place is perfect, the narrator of the "Black Cat" is not embarrassed and leads the officers in a full tour of the house. He roams about the cellar, calmly. The police are satisfied, and in his absolute glee, the narrator stops them as they depart to mention how well-built the house is and taps his cane against the brick work that hides the body. But his bravado is short lived. A horrible moan comes from the wall and turns into a shriek, half terrified, half triumphant. The narrator is suddenly faint as the police quickly uncover the corpse inside the wall. It has already started rotting, and on top of the gory figure of the narrator’s wife, sits the cat.