Thus, he wants to reveal his dark secrets and make a confession to unburthen his soul (Badenhausen 1992: 487). The Black Cat is a story narrated by an unnamed storyteller who at the very beginning, claims to be totally sane and rational and states that he is sentenced to death and will be killed the following day. What is more, female characters who appear in such stories, for instance, are often put in distress, threatened and dominated by enraged males (Childs and Fowler 2006: 99-100). Ghosts and supernatural events are more than common in gothic texts and so are the tormenting visions and unlucky omens that often haunt the main characters. Order custom essay Poe’s The Black Cat as an Example of Gothic Story The characters’ state of mind, their feelings and emotions, frequently take precedence over the plot. Gothic authors try to produce an atmosphere of suspense in their works by creating unpredictable characters, who struggle with madness, anger and acts of panic, in order to threaten the readers. The plot is very often mysterious and some unexplainable events occur on regular basis. The action of gothic stories take place in dark, spooky and dismal places. Main protagonists are usually placed in an old, abandoned castle, with secret chambers and passages. The genre has a number of characteristics, one of which is the setting. It was primarily based on the European Romantic Movement but over the course of time, tragic and supernatural dimensions were added to these stories as the leading themes in America. Although gothic fiction is a genre which was born in England at the end of the 18th century, it was soon well-received in the United States, where it influenced a wide array of writers. The Black Cat, first published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post (Sova 2007: 35), is one of many visible instances of Poe’s talent in writing gothic fiction.īeyond the shadow of a doubt, it is an excellent example of a gothic story due to its numerous features characteristic of this genre (Hayes 2004: 85). He is considered to be a horror-master and his literary output renders him a father of the detective story and one of the most prominent gothic story writers (Fisher 2004: 81). Poe's "The Black Cat" as an Example of Gothic Story Edgar Allan Poe, who lived a short and tragic life, was mainly known for his gothic stories embedded in the atmosphere of terror and suspense, with insane protagonists placed in gloomy settings.
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