I denne study guide kan du få hjælp til at analysere novellen "The Black Cat" af Edgar Allan Poe. Udover analysehjælpen kan du finde et summary af teksten, samt idéer til fortolkning og perspektivering.
Præsentation af teksten
Titel: “The Black Cat” (1843)
Forfatter: Edgar Allan Poe
Genre: Short story
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) var amerikansk forfatter. Hans fortællinger har ofte fokus på dystre eller makabre temaer, og falder ofte inden for horror-genren. Novellen "The Black Cat" blev første gang udgivet i 1843, i tidsskriftet The Saturday Evening Post.
Uddrag
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Title
The title of the short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe has both a literal and a symbolic meaning.
In the literal sense, the title is a direct reference to the two black cats belonging to the narrator. The narrator’s first pet, Pluto, is described as “a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree” (ll. 25-26). The second cat is also “a black cat–a very large one–fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one” (ll. 116-117).
The title can also be connected to the comment about black cats made by the narrator’s wife: “In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (ll. 26-28). This connection creates reader expectation, as it implies that the story may deal with the supernatural and the mysterious. The mysterious nature of the narrator’s cats is also emphasised by the striking similarity between the two animals, their odd behaviour, the strange shape-shifting mark bore by the second cat, the fire that destroyed the narrator’s house after he killed the first cat, and the image of a hanged cat embedded in the fresh plaster of a ruined wall in his house.
