Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction used symbols and intense imagery to tap into the dark and unknown parts of human existence. Hit gothic tales sought to redefine the ultimate human experience by showing the prevalence of horror in everyday life. Normal individuals are driven to rage and madness and they get to commit the most heinous crimes without reasonable justification for their actions. In “Legia” and “The Black Cat”, Poe relies on symbolism and imagery to show humanity’s relationship with nature and death. Poe explores man’s attempt at rationalizing the irrational. This paper seeks to compare and contrast the use of symbolism and imagery as well as the significance of the animal in revealing the animalistic tendencies of human nature. In both stories, Poe proves that the argument that humans are better than beasts is overstated because most humans have the propensity for greed and crime, especially when alcohol and drugs affect images in their brains.
The question of whether humans have evolved to a point where they are better than animals is critical to Poe’s gothic tales. It also leads him to use a variety of literary devices to portray man is inherently irrational and left to his own device, he is capable of unparalleled evil (Marita 458). The best way to know about the evil nature of man is to explore his relationship with animals. The narrator of “The Black Cat” reminisces over his childhood. When he was young, he liked animals and saw to it that when he grew older he would marry someone with the same devotion to animals just like him. As a family they got a black cat named Pluto. When the narrator drinks, he becomes enraged and is disturbed by the presence of Pluto and even his wife. He cuts off Pluto’s eye after a night of drunkenness and he later hangs the cat. He later adopts another cat that looks like Pluto and moves to a new home where he ends up killing his own wife. Like Montresor in the “Cask of Amontillado”, the nameless narrator’s murder involves tearing down brick walls and hiding the body inside the wall. It is the cat that leads the police to the narrator’s seemingly perfect crime.
“The Black Cat” is symbolic of death and the dark forces of the world. It is there to disturb the peaceful world of humanity. Before the black cat, the narrator and his wife were fond of animals and were committed to their well-beings. Pluto comes into their lives and challenges the notion that they live in harmony with animals (Marita 459). A close look at the name of the cat also shows that the cat is symbolic of something threatening and menacing like death. In ancient Rome, Pluto was the good of death.
Pluto the cat, come to remind the narrator about the inevitability of death something they were not prepared to think about or deal with. It is Pluto’s reminder that changes the rationalism of the narrator. The thought of death he could not bear so he instead thought of destroying the agent or reminder of death (Auerbach 22). In the process he disturbed life’s natural circle, he took away a life of both the cat and his wife. On the surface the reasons to kill the cat seem too silly for any man of decent intelligence but this is not a normal cat. It has special powers that disturb the soul and makes humans question their motives. Pluto is not just there to symbolize death and evil because “all black cats are witches in disguise” (Poe 2). He is also symbolic the failures of human beings to tame nature despite all efforts to do so. The narrator knows that he has no control over the cat and kills it. This also means he had no control over his own life, it was dictated by the constant alcoholism. It might be tempting to attribute his actions to alcohol but the truth lies in the fact that alcohol is only an enhancer of a way of thinking he already had. Deep down he hated the cat and his wife. In essence he hated his own life. He seems to end it through the cat. Harming the cat is a subconscious way of harming his own wife. It is inconceivable that a mere cat causes such revulsion in a human being that forces them to perform barbaric acts (Auerbach 38). The cat is just there to show that the narrator had something against society. It is not the cat he wants to get rid off, it is his environment. Killing the cat is a way of trying to cope with the world. It does not help because the cat reincarnated and this time with a white spot.
Another symbolic action in “The Black Cat” is the desire by the author to remove the cat’s eyes. He believes it sees too much and seems through him. It is the knowledge that the cat judges him that befuddles the narrator and removing eyes is a way of dealing with outside judgement. Blinding the cat is a way of making it not see his alcoholism (Marita 456). He thinks by blinding the cat, he can blind society.
Symbolism also pervades the world of Ligeia. The nameless narrator in Ligeia is disturbed by the death of his first wife, Ligeia. Her memory haunts him even to his second marriage. Ligeia is symbolic of a mystical tradition that affects the narrator. He is fond of her because there is so much mystery that surrounds her existence (Bieganowski 176). He is not even sure of her last name or how he met her but that makes him love her more. Between Ligeia and Lady Rowena is a fight between two traditions - the gothic, mystical tradition that has its origins from Germany and the rationalism of the English world (Bieganowski 180). Lady Rowena’s sickness comes from the bed chamber which is a constant reminder of how the gothic memories of Ligeia still persists despite the fact that the narrator had remarried. The death of Lady Rowena is caused by both the narrator and Ligeia.
The rise of the dead is as symbolic in Ligeia as it is in The Black cat. The reader is able to observe that Poe was fascinated with the idea of reincarnation but it is not the normal, pleasant reincarnation. Pluto, the Black Cat comes back to life in the form of another cat which the narrator hated. In Ligeia, the narrator’s first wife, Ligeia comes back to life but only to haunt him. Ligeia and Pluto are victorious in that they manage to disturb the normal lives of the two narrators to the point where they are not sure if drugs were behind their experience or they were really experiencing the mystical world.
This brings us to the symbolism of drugs and alcohol. In the Black Cat, it is alcohol which alters the narrator’s consciousness and drives him to rage and leads him to harm the cat despite the fact that he loved animals. Alcohol elicits passion but negative passion. It is drunkenness which gives the narrator courage to abuse the animal and also commit murder. The presence of drugs and alcohol makes the reader question the authenticity of the narrator’s story. The first effect of drugs is seem in the opening lines of the short story. In The Black Cat, the narrator says “for the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief” (The Black Cat 1). From the onset one is asked to question the reliability of such a narrative. In Ligeia Joseph Granvill opens the story by saying “I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed and my memory is feeble through suffering” (Ligeia 1). Both openings tell the reader that what is to come either confirmation or not cannot be trusted.
One is hard pressed to think that the narrator is unreliable and might not have liked animals at all. He probably lied to his first wife that he did like animals and the alcohol brings out the true nature of his feelings towards animals. He is aware of the effect alcohol has on his relationship with both humans and animals. He notes that “but my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like alcohol!-and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish-even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper” (The Back Cat n. p.). In Ligeia, the narrator’s descriptions are vivid but unreliable as well. The narrator is able to describe his wife as emaciated but cannot remember her last name of where they met (Bieganowski 183). This makes the reader wonder whether the story is authentic or it is an opium induced tale with no relations to reality.
The narrator does play a role in the death of Lady Rowena, it is the gothic bed chamber that drives her to illness, he doesn't seek to change it because he seeks the reincarnation of Ligeia. The drugs especially opium has the profound effect of altering the narrator’s state of consciousness to the point where he believes that Ligeia does indeed come from the bed. The reader is hard pressed to accept the fact that the sighting of Legia is real. Poe’s main characters are always behind some of the most heinous crimes and they find justification in their distorted reality caused by drugs. Through alcohol and opium, the narrator “falls victim to his own seductive reasoning” (Auerbach 39). This has the effect of complicating the story.
Drugs are important and symbolic to Pie’s work, they are there to question the power of human reason. There characters are driven to perform terrible acts based on terrible justifications. The killing of the cat has no rational justification as well as the contribution to the suffering of Lady Rowena in Ligeia. Even the murder of Fortunato by Montresor is The Cask of Amontillado lacks any meaningful justification. The question that comes out of this is what Poe is saying about drugs. He seems not to be dismissive of drugs or in favor of them but he makes a point that the true nature of human evil can be exposed once drugs are involved in human affairs (Auerbach 27). With drugs comes paranoia and crime which are not exactly products of drugs but they do fuel bad acts. Another effect of all this paranoia is the fact that the past keeps on haunting all of Poe’s characters. Living is the past cripples Poe’s characters and they use drugs to deal with the past and also justify their actions. Hope is not characteristic of Poe’s writing which makes his characters the more hated.
In conclusion, “The Black Cat” and “Ligeia” are too horror stories full of symbols that explores the nature of man’s relationship to love and nature. They also reveal the dangers posed to society by drugs. Poe’s characters use alcohol and drugs to justify their actions and to provide unreliable narratives. Drugs has the capacity to produce vivid imagery but it is difficult to trust these images as real. They are a result of opium and alcohol. Through his characters Poe shows that human beings are bound to commit evil crimes and they have justifications even for the most of horrible crimes committed without being provoked. Killing a cat because one does not like its eyes is as bad as neglecting one’s wife to death because they are not like your dead first wife.
Works Cited
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Romance of Failure: First Person Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne and James. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Bieganowksi, Ronald. “The Self-Consuming Narrator in Poe's "Ligeia" and "Usher"”. American
Literature 60.2 (1988): 175-187.
Marita, Nadal. Variations on the Grotesque: From Poe's "The Black Cat" to Oates's "The White
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