In the narrative tradition, few concepts are as popular as supernatural intervention in human life. These interventions typically present a very familiar, almost domestic collection of descriptive forms: angels, demons, invisible kinetic forces, and even nature itself are all used as representations of divinity and unknowable power. It's the sign of a true master to escape this gallery of clichés and handcrafted details that create a unique statement; in Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Black Cat, many things are done in a chilling and gruesome style. For Poe, the Christian concept of God is irrelevant, and he writes from a position of his own morality, in which there is no guardian, no benevolent light to guide souls from the path of darkness. There is only relentless, disembodied punishment, as the narrator's abuses are punished not spiritually, in the next life, but in the present, with shocking violence. After Original Sin, in which the narrator cuts out one of his beloved cat Pluto's eyes with a pocketknife in repair of "a slight wound on his hand" (Poe 30), madness quickly begets madness, as patterns of destruction they are reversed on the narrator's attitude. life and psyche. The lack of a clear antagonist in the story is essential. Pluto, alcohol, the house fire and the gallows: distinct events and narrative aspects, each touched by an unspecified element of the supernatural, run together like the frames of a cinematographic film, weaving a concept of spirituality in which evil does no part of life, but a vast and looming picture in which the trappings of mortal life are but small parts. In The Black Cat, horror itself is the only God Poe recognizes, fear is anything but abstract, and morality is imposed not by a just and perfect creator, but through ferocious twists of madness and fate . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The key to a correct interpretation of this tale is the narrator's unholy attention to the concept of rational explanation. In his own words, “I am above the weakness of trying to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between disaster and atrocity” (Poe 31). There is no truly sensible explanation for the image of the hanging cat that appears in the rubble of the sudden fire, just as there is no truly sensible explanation for the crazy swings of violent temper that the narrator repeatedly experiences. Instead, the reader is forced to move away from reality, towards the extrasensory world, the world of destiny, madness, fortune and ruin. In Poe's imagination, this second world is every bit as real as the first, fully capable of transcending the boundaries of perception to leave a damning message on a crumbling wall, a cat's chest, or the bottom of a gin bottle. Of course Poe is not simply a teller of ghost stories and bloody parables; his work The Black Cat is noticeably devoid of any formal theological or mythological framework in which to place the supernatural events that occur. With an ideologically mature literary decision, Poe eschews dogma, be it Christian or even pagan, in favor of humanity's last boogeyman: the unknown. Furthermore, free moments of irony, hidden between the action-packed lines of this short story, do much to illustrate its anti-Christian themes. It is no coincidence that the first cat, Pluto, shares a name with the Roman god of the underworld; this parallel underlines the strength of superstition on faith.