... is the stimulus why he violates the grave of his lover and rips her teeth while she is still alive. The narrator of the story, "The Black Cat," would not gouge out the cat's eye and then hang it from a tree as well as he would not kill his wife if he were sane. A derangement of the protagonist of "The ... is questionable, Poe certainly had problems with alcohol which could provide him with more intimate understanding of mentalities of his deranged characters. For instance, in the short story, "The Black Cat," addiction to alcohol is portrayed in the relation with insanity of the narrato...

• Word Count: 1406
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... mob. In Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, the quest for identity undertakes deeper meanings, which spring out from the exploration of the darker side of human nature. Either in The Black Cat or The Cask of Amontillado, the quest for the narrator's identity is linked to the search and discovery of the unconscious impulses, which are represented, in the first, through the ... image of "the black cat-, an embodiment of "the spirit of perverseness-, and in the latter, through the character of Fortunato, a double of the narrator, whom he symbolically tries to murder. The repression of these ....

• Word Count: 2241
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate