The short story "The Black Cat", written by Poe, has a plot which is based on irony. The biggest contributor of this is the love that the narrator has for animals when he is young. The narrator says that he felt most happy as a child when he was feeding and caressing the animals that his parents had given him. This love for animals stayed with him well into his early manhood. This could be seen by the fact that he and his wife owned birds, goldfish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

Ironically this loved turned into hate. Animals now seemed to annoy rather than comfort him. Pluto, who was a black cat a

He apparently got away with it because when the police came to search the house they didn't find anything at first. Then the last piece of irony occurred. The narrator and the police heard a crying noise from inside the wall. When the police dug the wall open the corpse fell out with the cat lying on it. The cat was walled up with the corpse and was making the crying sound that alerted the police. The irony is that the cat crying showed the police of the crime that was committed. In a way this seems like revenge for the narrator killing the other black cat.

For a week the young man planned the perfect killing. He practices exactly what he is going to do. Finally the night came when he is going to do the deed. He kills the old man and dissembles him limb by limb and buries him under three planks in the floor.

The irony continues when another black cat comes into the narrator's life. At first this cat too was treated as a friend, but eventually appeared as just as much of a threat as the other cat. The narrator attempted to cut off this cat's head with an ax, but was stopped by his wife. In a torrid rage the narrator split his wife's head open with the ax. To cover up this deed he placed the body of his wife in one of his basement walls.

An important symbol in "The Black Cat" was the color of the cat. Black represents emptiness and hopelessness, just like the narrator's poverty and alcohol filled life. Once the narrator lost his love for animals he lost what made him happy, most likely the only thing that made him happy. When he turned on them it represented him giving up on life.

After the old man is dead the narrator feels that he has rid himself of his horrors. When the police are talking to the narrator, the narrator hears what he believes to be the heart of the old man. The heart that he hears is actually his own. By mistaking his heart for the old man's it shows the connection the narrator thinks exists between the old man's eye and his horrors. The beating of the heart also shows that these horrors still exist. By these horrors still existing even after the murder, the narrator will never be able to escape them. There for his life is hopeless in his eyes and he is as dead as the man is he just murdered.

When the police come to check on a scream that was heard the night before by a neighbor they, but they found nothing. After a period of time that they are talking to the young man he begins to hear a ringing. This ringing continues to get louder and louder until he can't take it anymore. Finally to stop the ringing he admits the whole deed to the police and shows them where the body lies. This all after he

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Approximate Word count = 1782
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)