Narrator and point of view

The short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative.

The narrator of the story is unreliable. In the first lines, he tries to explain to the readers that he is not mad, even though what he is about to narrate might make him seem insane: “Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream” (ll. 2-3). However, the fact that he claims sanity but then he admits that alcohol has clouded his judgment and that he started acting violently (ll. 36-37) is contradictory. Furthermore, when he tries to explain his deeds resorting to rationality, he fails to offer a logical explanation:

…hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God (ll...