Poe’s Exploration of the Darker Side of Human Nature in the Black Cat free essay sample

Poe’s exploration of the darker side of human nature in The Black Cat, Hop-Forg and Fall of the House of Usher Introduction The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone. The reason for a Gothic setting is to ably portray the dark and sepulchral undertones of the psyche of the stories’ characters, and through them, the nature of humans in general. Hop-Frog Compared to the other two short stories given for analysis Hop-Frog has very limited, if any, Gothic elements. However the climax of the story in itself is greatly shocking. Hop-Frog is shown to have tricked the King and his councillors into dressing as ourang-outans on the occasion of a masquerade in the palace. With a pre-planned connivance with Trippetta, he gathers them, thus dressed and chained together, at the centre of the ballroom and suspends them from the ceiling. During this part of the story, the maniacal side of the jester comes forth. The grating of his teeth and foam forming at his mouth create a picture of a mentally unstable person. His whole demeanour changes from that of a congenial, meek servant of the King to a raging, evil villain. Hop-Frog calculatedly planned the entire action, right from the material used to create the costumes which would be easily inflamed to the easy escape he and Trippetta would make after concluding their vendetta successfully. The King and his privy-council had to pay bitterly for their unjust and cruel treatment of Hop-Frog and Trippetta through painful deaths. The manner of the killing, which was made into a ghastly spectacle, reveals the depths of darkness to which the human soul can descend in order to avenge the wrongs inflicted on it. This action of Hop-Frog with participation from Trippetta, however grotesque or inhuman it may seem, is not without reason. They were kidnapped from their land and brought to the King’s palace where they had to lead a life of servility and humiliation and also suffered loss of identity and esteem. They were treated inhumanly and the daily abuse caused resentment and a feeling of revenge in them. However, the dark side of human nature, which presents itself so blatantly through Hop-Frog’s actions, surfaces subtly in the actions of other characters. The King and his council do not hesitate in using Hop-Frog and Trippetta – deserving of more consideration and respect in their own rights – as playthings. The two prisoners (that is what they are in the palace, being held there against their will) have no control over their lives or even their own bodies. The behaviour of the King shows that side of humans that has no consideration for the feelings of others and does not treat others as fellow humans but as mere objects. He oppresses and tyrannises the two dwarfs so much that driven by desperation, they plan and execute his horrific murder in order to escape his torment. The King, blinded by his power and position, humiliates Hop-Frog and Trippetta for his own mirth and his privy-council, who should counsel him in doing otherwise, egg him on and partake in this sordid mockery of the two. In abetting the King, they become his accomplices. They represent lack of compassion and sympathy. The Black Cat The Black Cat perhaps examines the dark side of humans most effectively as it involves sadistic actions and even murder. The narrator, who is the perpetrator of most heinous crimes, while enumerating those crimes of his, comes across as cool and rational. Nevertheless, he is an unreliable narrator. He admits that he is greatly fond of animals, yet hurts his cat Pluto. Poe delves into the narrator’s decline from sanity to madness which takes a shocking turn of events. One of the arguments, which I feel can be established through this story about human perversity, is that it can be inherent in many of us. People have a tendency of ascribing external stimuli as reasons for actions and behaviour of man. If a person becomes a criminal, we look for reasons in his background and social setting. However, it is not always necessary that a poor person will take to crime to alleviate his misery. It is the innate darkness and leaning towards the evil that disposes us to committing acts of brutality and insensitivity. In The Black Cat, the narrator admits that it was an â€Å"unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself – to offer violence to its own nature – to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only†¦Ã¢â‚¬  that made him carry out the merciless killing of his most favourite pet. Some readers might blame his alcoholism for this act but it is quite evident in the narration that when he was committing this brutal act, he was very much in his senses. So much so, that as he was hanging the cat (Pluto) to the limb of the tree with a noose around its neck, â€Å"tears were streaming† from his eyes â€Å"with the bitterest remorse† at his heart. He knew he was committing a sin. A sin so terrible that even the highest mercy of God would not exonerate his blighted soul. Yet, this realisation did not keep him from following the call of his perverse side. Before the episode of killing Pluto, the narrator, after returning home drunk and sensing that the cat was avoiding his company, seized it violently. During this physical bout the cat bit his hand out of fright and perhaps a sense of self-preservation. The narrator was so enraged with this that he gouged out one of Pluto’s eyes out of its sockets. While narrating this incident, he is much ashamed and horrified. He is regretful even the next morning of the deed. But in his own words, â€Å"†¦ it was, at best, a feeble and unequivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. We as readers know that his remorse and feelings of guilt were short-lived because soon afterwards we see him indulging in the vices of drinking again, followed by the killing of Pluto. On the night of Pluto’s killing, his house catches fire and the next day he comes back to find among the ruin, the imprint of the Black Cat with a rope around its neck on the single wall of his house that survived the fire. At first he is terrorised by this image. But later, he tries to brush aside the appearance of the cat’s image and tries to rationalise it. However, his conscience is troubled by the apparition. Yet he does not want to acknowledge the â€Å"half-sentiment† as remorse because that would mean admitting to himself that the killing of Pluto had affected him deeply. His ambivalent feelings and reactions to his sin tell us about the troubled state of his mind. Under such circumstances, he finds another cat that closely resembles Pluto and brings it home. His inner turbulence does not let him stay in peace and he views this cat as a reincarnation of Pluto, come to exact revenge from him. In a fit of rage, he tries to kill this cat but ends up killing his wife whose body he conceals in a vault in the cellar of his new home. After the murder of his wife, the black cat is seen no more and the narrator â€Å"slept soundly† at night, although he had the burden of his wife’s murder on his heart. Here, the narrator presents a conflicting picture. Any conscientious person would be tormented by guilt after committing such an act. But the narrator only shows some vestige of regret and is able to sleep off the crime. The fact of the cat’s disappearance is more relieving for him than the burden of his guilt. The Fall of the House of Usher The story begins with the narrator describing a very sad and gloomy landscape and as he comes to the House of Usher, the ambience is dark and morbid. In the former two stories, we see how the dark side of human nature can have negative or even fatal consequences for others. In The Fall of the House of Usher however, the darkness within Roderick Usher proves damningly baleful for him. In this short story, Roderick Usher’s perversity and disordered mind led to his ultimate destruction. In this story, Poe is trying to bring out the dark side of human nature by placing the narrator’s character in a dark gloomy place which is engulfing him in an aura of terror and darkness. He showed how the mind can be consumed by fear. The darkest of human deeds, that of extinguishing the life of another (in this case, Roderick Usher’s sister, Madeline’s life), is portrayed in this story. A sense of claustrophobia is constructed in the story through the portrayal of the narrator being trapped in the House and not being able to leave it until it finally cracks from the middle and falls down. This could be an allegory of the entrapment of Roderick Usher himself in the darkness within him, which he is able to escape only with his own death. How Roderick Usher is able to entomb his twin sister alive in the house he is staying in would be horrifying for most readers. However the real darkness comes from the struggle of Usher to stay sane and how his fear and guilt work upon him and consume him so that towards the end of the story, he is reduced to a shadow of his former self, barely managing to stay sane and audible. Conclusion Through these three short stories, Poe presents a working of the dark side f human nature and how it affects humans and also the people and events around them. I think the reason why Poe is so successful in dealing with this darkness is that he plays on the reader’s fear of the darkness that is inherent in every one of us. We all have good and evil within us and are often tempted to give in to evil and darkness. Poe, while describing this darkness, also presents a picture of downfall and failure which meets the people who go down this path. Poe was able to tap in to the forces that we all feel within us, but through characters who take this inner darkness to their chilling conclusions.