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Poe Friday: The Black Cat

First off, I hope you are all having a great Friday. Hubby took me and the kids out to dinner today at IHOP (what is better than a stack of buttermilk pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner?) and now i'm home getting some online time in.

This week I read Edgar Allan Poe's short story called The Black Cat.



first line: For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.

The narrator starts of the story by speaking about his black cat named Pluto. One day, he comes home drunk and Pluto scratches him. He loses control and cuts one of the cats eyes out.

When reason returned with the morning - when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch - I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.

Soon after, the narrator hangs the cat. I know, how depressing. After a fire burns down his home, he and his wife end up living in a cellar. He then ends up finding another black cat. This cat however, has white fur on his chest. The narrators wife takes the cat in and the narrator soon begins to get creeped out by the animal. Before you know it, the narrator finds an ax and tries to kill the cat, when his wife stops him, he kills her instead.




I liked this short story. I always enjoy Poe's dramatic words.

Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight - an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off - incumbent eternally upon my heart !

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?

You can read Poe online for free here.

Time for Poe Friday.






title: The Premature Burial

genre: horror/short story

author: Edgar Allan Poe


first line: There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.


rated: pretty good

The Premature Burial deals with a fear many people have, being buried alive.
As Poe writes:

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.

The narrator in this short story tells of different instances of people being buried alive. Some were able to make thier way out of the poorly buried coffins, others skeletons were found years later in odd positions, as if they had been trying to escape.

We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.

The narrator then goes on to tell of his own experience. He suffered from a disease that made him pass out and fall into a death-like trance. He would be unconcious for days, he calls it 'cataleptic disorder'. He was terrified of being buried alive one day, so he had the family vault remodeled so that it could be easily opened from the inside. He winds up living in fear and not traveling far from home, in case he falls into one of his fits and is accidentally buried alive.



In the end, he winds up waking up in a dark, confined area, and right away he thinks he is buried alive. It turns out, he was on trip with a friend, on a boat. When a storm comes, they anchor the boat and all go to sleep in the berth, which is small and dark. When he starts screaming, the crew screams back at him to be quiet, he realizes he is still on the boat. After that, he no longer lives his life in fear of being buried alive. Life is too short!

I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts" -- no fustian about churchyards -- no bugaboo tales -- such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life.

I liked this short story, the ending was different than what I expected.




Have you read this short story? If not, you can do so here

I stumbled upon Poe Fridays while blog hopping, i'm sorry but I can't remember whose blog I first found it on. The basic idea is to read Poe and post on Fridays about it. I am a fan of EAP's dark, dramatic writing, I do have his collection of works on my bookshelf. The Tell Tale Heart and The Raven are my favorites. For today I will post his poem, Lenore.

Lenore

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! -a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river -
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? -weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read -the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.



"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her -that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? -the requiem how be sung
By you -by yours, the evil eye, -by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"



Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride -
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair -the death upon her eyes.



Avaunt! tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!
Let no bell toll! -lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven -
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven -
From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."

related link: http://www.online-literature.com/poe/