In this state of permanent torture, all the goodness that the narrator of "The Black Cat" had in his heart has disappeared.
His evil instincts takeover, and even his wife is feeling his fury.
One day, they go to visit
their old house on an errand, and when the narrator sees the new cat has followed him he swings an axe at it, but his wife stops his arm. Ina rage, he strikes his wife in the head with the axe and kills her. His mind turns immediately to how to dispose of the body. He considers cutting it up, digging a grave in the cellar, but decides that the best way is to hide the body in the wall of the cellar.
From the first attack on Pluto, the narrator’s evil deeds multiplyhorrifically, each one breeding the next. All trace of remorse is gone.Now the narrator cold-bloodedly focuses on concealing the body ofhis wife, without any sign of grief or of ever having cared for her. Poeuses the domestic environment to amplify the horror – just as thenarrator warned at the beginning of the story, the household is nowhome to murder. In fact, the very walls of the family home are usedto hide the bodies.The plan works. The narrator of the "Black Cat" removes the bricks covering the fireplace, and puts the body in and covers it again. He works hard to replace the wall and recreate the scene just as it was and in the end is satisfied that nothing is amiss.
Then the narrator determines to find the cat so that he can at last rid himself of its presence, but he finds it absent for the first time. The sense of relief is extreme. The cat doesn’t appear for the whole night and for the first time since its arrival, even with the murder
of his wife on his hands, the narrator sleeps soundly. For three more days, this bliss continues.
After the intense activity of the narrator’s plan to hide the body inthe wall, the silence in the cat’s absence is strongly felt. It is the quietbefore the storm. We as readers know we have not heard the last ofit because the narrator has not been found out (we already knowthat he is in prison as he writes this. Though the narrator sleepssoundly, Poe keeps up the suspense for the reader.On the fourth day, some policemen arrive to search the property, but knowing that his stowing place is perfect, the narrator of the "Black Cat" is not embarrassed and leads the officers in a full tour of the house. He roams about the cellar,
calmly.
The police are satisfied, and in his absolute glee, the narrator stops them as they depart to mention how well-built the house is and taps his cane against the brickwork that hides the body. But his bravado is short lived. A horrible moan comes from the wall and turns into a shriek, half terrified, half triumphant. The narrator is suddenly faint as the police quickly uncover the corpse inside the wall. It has already started rotting, and on top of the gory figure of the narrator’s wife, sits the cat.
The narrator’s delusional, arrogant personality has grown out of allrecognition from the animal-love we were first introduced to. Thenarrator feels no fear, all remorse is gone, and he seems to delight inhis crimes to the point where he desires to show them off and getcredit for them. But this is his downfall. The moment he has beenShare with your friends: