Dawa Sonam
Do You Know Your True Self?
In “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, he proposes an idea of human nature and how twisted it can get. In this short-story, Poe portrays the twisted mind of the narrator by letting us into his cruel and evil thoughts as well as the narrator’s actions which leads to countless animals’ death. The narrator had been living with his wife and had several pets at home and the narrator’s favourite pet was a cat named Pluto. Freud’s “Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis” goes over the Freudian concepts which are seen throughout “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, successfully uses a variety of Freudian concepts on psychoanalysis such as resistance, repression, and displacement to depict the change in the narrator’s psychology.
Poe successfully depicts this change by connecting the Freudian concept of resistance to his short-story. In the story, the narrator first tells us how he was “especially fond of animals” and how his parents indulged him “with a great variety of pets” and he spent most of his time “feeding and caressing them” (Poe 3). This shows us the narrator’s friendly and kindhearted attitude towards animals and even his parents saw this and let him have a lot of pets. As the story progresses, the narrator “grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others” (Poe 4). After this, everything started going downhill because the narrator started becoming a violent person and abused his wife and pets. In the beginning, the narrator resisted against harming Pluto since he states how “For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him”( Poe 4). But one day he came home intoxicated, and he held Pluto and “deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” (Poe 5). This change in the narrator’s behavior shows that he tried to resist his frustration and anger for his cat but at the end, Pluto had to suffer the same fate as his other pets. This connects to the Freudian concept of resistance because the narrator didn’t know before that he would be able to do something so harsh to an animal which he dearly loved. In Lecture III, Freud states that “resistance we already know about, which was striving to prevent what was repressed or its derivatives from thus becoming conscious” (2217). This means that resistance is used as a defense mechanism to prevent the repressed emotion from the unconscious mind to become aware of it in the conscious mind. Therefore, the narrator’s unconscious mind was applying “resistance” to prevent him becoming aware of his true violent nature. All in all, the narrator needed a portal or a way for this bottled repressed emotions to come out so him drinking alcohol and being intoxicated allowed his true nature to come out.
Poe demonstrates how the narrator has been repressing his violent thoughts his whole life as the story progresses. A few days after the narrator killed Pluto, he states how he “could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat”(Poe 7). This event is telling us how the narrator was linked to the cat since he kept having “phantasm” of the cat, meaning that he kept seeing the illusions of Pluto, who he killed by hanging him from the tree. This also hints us towards how the narrator hated animals his whole life, but he only came to this realization after he started becoming an alcoholic which explains his violent acts towards his pets. As the story progresses, he finds another cat and believes that he has become fond of the cat and the cat also becomes fond of the narrator. However, after bringing that cat home, the narrator has a feeling of “disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred” (Poe 8). The narrator’s fondness towards the cat completely goes away after bringing the cat home which is very unusual since any normal person would only bring an animal home if they really like that animal. But the narrator felt the bond between the cat and him but his feelings completely changed and he was actually repulsed by the cat’s presence. This directly connects to the Freudian concept of repression, because in Lecture II, Freud talks about how the “repressed wishful impulse continues to exist in the unconscious” (2215). This means that your true feeling is in the unconscious mind but you just aren’t wary of it. Therefore, the narrator’s true nature was “repressed” his whole life and the evidence from Freud’s lecture supports this idea that the narrator was holding onto these cruel thoughts all along in the unconscious state of mind.
The last Freudian concept seen in “The Black Cat” by Poe is displacement. According to Freud, displacement is when someone shifts their anger towards someone who can’t fight back or someone with less power. In the short-story, “The Black Cat”, we see how Poe utilizes displacement to show the narrator’s frustration and anger being taken out on his pets. The narrator describes how he killed Pluto by putting a “noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (Poe 6). The narrator goes on and states how he “hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence” (Poe 6). This example shows how the narrator killed Pluto just because he felt like doing it even though Pluto was his favorite pet. This also portrays the narrator’s abnormal mental state which is completely different than how he used to be. His kindness towards animals and especially towards Pluto was no longer present, this shows how he changed so much mentally. This is an example of displacement since the narrator takes out his frustration and anger towards his beloved pets which whatsoever have no power and can’t fight back.
Throughout the short-story, the narrator’s perception towards his pets and other animals changes drastically. He goes from an animal lover and a good husband to an abusive husband and an animal abuser. Freudian concepts such as displacement, repression and resistance is seen throughout “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe. The Freudian concepts such as displacement, resistance and repression can be seen throughout the short-story. These Freudian concepts portray how the narrator goes through psychological changes which turns him into a completely different person than who he used to be.
References:
Poe, Edgar. “The Black Cat”. Ibiblio, José Menéndez, https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Black_Cat.pdf. PDF Download
Freud, Sigmond. “FIVE LECTURES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS”. Semantic Scholar
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