The biggest mystery of this short story is the portrait of the maiden itself, which makes the narrator, feels so interested in it and how the portrait
can become so vividly drawn. However, we still can find the answer at the end of the story, such as the ambition and love of the painter towards art and
the love of the maiden towards the painter.
3.1.2. The Black Cat
The Black Cat was first published in the August 19, 1843. The story opens in a typical style of Poes works. An unnamed narrator claims to be
perfectly sane and logical, yet the manner of his writing and the story he goes on to relate both seem to prove otherwise. As in many of his stories
presented as a first person narrative. In the beginning of the story, the narrator explains about himself that
make me feel curious and mysterious. He keeps on saying that he is crazy; about what he has done to something but not saying what the thing is until it
reaches the third paragraph. “For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am
about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. 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. But to-morrow I die, and to-
day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without
comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --
have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror --to
many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce
my phantasm to the common-place --some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own,
which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.”
Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 597
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When he explains about his wife and the pets that he has got, Edgar Allan Poe uses usual font of letters but when it comes to the word “cat”, he
changes it into italic cat. It means there is a mystery about the cat and it starts to draw readers attention to that creature. As we can see from the
quotation below: “I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a
disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of
procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.”
Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 597 Actually, there is an obvious mystery from the title itself, The Black
Cat. Usually black cat is a symbol of bad thing or in the superstitious belief; people believe that something will happen if there is black cat around us.
Moreover, there is an idea voiced by the narrators wife that the black cats are all witches in disguise.
“... 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. Not that she was ever
serious upon this point --and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be
remembered...” Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 598
The narrator loves the cat very much as it can be seen from how he takes care of the cat and how the cat replies his treatment to him. As we can
see from the quotation below: “...Pluto --this was the cats name --was my favorite pet
and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with
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difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets...” Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 598
There is also a mystery in his point of view about his attitude toward the cat that he hung. He loves the cat very much and he still has the
awareness about killing is a big sin, but he still kill the one he loves. The mysterious part of this is that we don’t know exactly why he wants to do so.
Is it because of his short-tempered that he has because of the alcohol’s effect or because of the evil part of him or because he is crazy? As we can see
from the quotation below: “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its
neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest
remorse at my heart; --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. ...”
Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 599, 600 The next event is very eerie and mysterious. On the same day as the
narrator kills the cat, his house is on fire. A very big fire that swallow all of his house including all of his property. It happens so suddenly in the middle
of the night with no clues of how it happens. Maybe it happens coincidencely, but for the readers, it can be referred as a revenge of the cat’s
spirit. Especially there is a relief of the murdered cat on the narrator’s bedroom. This event can be assumed as the most mysterious part of this
story. Although the narrator perceives this event in a realistic way and explain it scientifically, but the reader still feels that it is not as simple as
what he thinks. Because the narrator seems to be insisting himself to believe in what he analyse although he knows that it is not true. It must have been
done by something spiritually. As we can see from the quotation below:
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“... I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression
was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animals neck. ... When I first beheld this
apparition --for I could scarcely regard it as less --my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length
reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of
fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd - -by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from
the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of
arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of
the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, had then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass,
accomplished the portraiture as I saw it. ...”
Patrick. F. Quinn, 1984 : 600 On his most remorse moment, there come another black cat which is
exactly the same as Pluto. The only thing that is different from Pluto is the white fur on its chest. But he doesn’t know where this black cat comes from.
Even the owner of the place that he found it also doesn’t know anything about this cat. Form here, we can consider about what old man said about
cat. There is a superstitious believe which tells about cat is a creature that has nine souls. So that it can reincarnate and continue its life again after it
dies. Moreover, this cat really likes the narrator as if it has already known him before and so willingly follow the narrator home. And the next day, the
narrator just realize that this cat is also has got only one eye Once again, it emphasizes the superstitious believe about cat’s nine souls.
The white fur on its chest changes each and every day and becomes the shape of gallows which the narrator used to hang Pluto before. It is one
of the unsolved mysteries of this story. The next mystery is the policemen who come after several days of he
killed his wife. Poe does not tell us the reason of the coming policemen to his house to investigate. The readers can not know how the policemen know
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something has happened in the narrator’s house. It is still unsolved until the end of the story.
At the end of the story, the cat which suddenly disappears after the narrator kills his wife, appears again on the last day of the policemen’s
investigation and it is in the narrator’s wife’s tomb and is sitting on his wife’s head It is a big mystery about how it can be inside the “tomb”
Because when the narrator built the wall up again after putting his wife’s body, he must be very concentrate on the things in front of him, such as
bricks, wall and the hole where his wife is lying. He must have noticed if there was something go into the wall. So there must be no chance for the cat
to sneak into it. From these explainations, there are enough evidents to prove that the
black cat itself is the biggest mystery of this story. As a conclusion, the fire incident which happens after the murder of Pluto, the relief fo a big cat with
ropes around its neck, the unknown place of the second black cat from, the similarity with the previous cat, the white fur on its chest that changes every
day and its appearance in the wall are unsolve and unexplainable of this story and is considered as mystery element of the story.
3.1.3. Berenice Berenice is one of the few Poe stories whose narrator is named. It is
