A Narrator’s Psychological Descent

Many often wonder what goes on through the heads of the many people they see everyday. People generally keep their own thoughts to themselves unless they decide to tell somebody else. This is completely circumvented in works such as literature, as readers are able to witness the character’s thoughts themselves. As a result, it becomes possible to analyze characters through their thoughts, their actions, and their descriptions of the situation. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a story in where the perspective is kept in the first person, allowing for a clear picture on who the main character is and what their goals are. Through reading the story, it can be inferred that the unnamed narrator faces many mental issues as a result of the actions he takes. Freudian concepts such as displacement, parapraxis, and wishful impulse are all present within “The Black Cat” in order to exhibit the narrator’s state of mind, and his deteriorating psyche.

Displacement is the shifting of impulse or emotions of an unacceptable target, to somebody else who is considered more acceptable of a target. The narrator demonstrates this in “The Black Cat” in where he states “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me.” (Poe, Edgar Allan “The Black Cat”) He reveals earlier that his alcoholic nature is the source of his anger and moody behavior. His original feelings of anger is due to the alcohol which isn’t something he can physically take his anger out on. Instead, he thinks to himself that his cat Pluto is trying to avoid him, which peeves the narrator and results in the cat receiving the displaced anger. The displacement of emotions is negatively regarded as the target that is facing the displaced emotions usually has nothing to do with the original target of these feelings. The narrator did exactly this to his innocent cat, and it would only be the start to his dark descent.

The narrator would continue on to demonstrate more examples of Freudian terms, this time of wishful impulse. Wishful impulses are impulses that people think about, but know they shouldn’t act on. Sigmund Freud speaks on wishful impulse and states “But the repressed wishful impulse continues to exist in the unconscious. It is on the look-out for an opportunity of being activated…” (Freud, Sigmund “Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” 2215) Freud states that repressed wishful impulses will continue to remain in the unconscious and in “The Black Cat,” the narrator’s repressed wishful impulse can be inferred to be his violent nature. At first, his repressed wishful impulses came into fruition due to his state of intoxication which removed his mind’s ability to repress which allowed him kill his cat and activate the wishful impulse. Later on, his repressed wishful impulse would activate once again but with more deliberation as he kills his own wife and hides the body with much thought. His wishful impulse remained in his unconscious and as he continued to kill, it would activate more often. This would lead to him eventually activating his wishful impulse whenever possible and as a result, would lead him in a downward path.

At the very end of the story, the narrator is investigated by policemen after his wife mysteriously goes missing. They search his house and find nothing and as they leave, the narrator says “By the bye, gentlemen, this — this is a very well constructed house.’ (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) ‘I may say an excellently well constructed house.” (Poe, Edgar Allan “The Black Cat”) Parapraxis or “Freudian slip” is an unintended action that occurs when there is an interference from the unconscious. The narrator nearly gets away with the deed, but in an attempt to reassure the police, he accidently slips up the location of the hidden body. The significance of this is due to it revealing that the narrator had been thinking about his dead wife in his unconscious thoughts. He writes that he had acted very calmly and collected as he showed the police the many parts of his house. Despite his calmness within his conscious mind, he would later learn that his unconscious mind is what would fail him. His unconscious thoughts had “slipped” onto his conscious mind, and he would reveal his crimes to the police, leading to his arrest and the end of his horrid acts.

“The Black Cat” is a story that gives an insight of a fictional man’s dark thoughts. Because of it’s status of a work of literature, it becomes possible to look at the character’s thoughts and analyze the inner workings of their mind. Despite the story being fictional, it surprisingly had many connections to Freudian terms that had not yet existed at the time of the story’s publication. This would allow for an even more disturbing story due to it essentially making the narrator appear more human and less of an evil, crazy monster that killed simply because of a strange black cat. His descent into a man with a tormented psyche was more tragic and less sinister as a result. The Freudian concepts that appeared within “The Black Cat” all helped to demonstrate the narrator’s faltering mental state and his psychological descent into a compulsive killer.

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