The Black Cat is one of Poes works, written on 1843. The time setting of the story much affected the story. During that time, 1830s and 1840s, there was a movement in America. The movement made by young people from Boston. Among the younger people, there was much talk about new spiritual era, The young intellectual of Boston felt dissatisfy with the old patriotism. Americas power and wealth did not interest them. They wanted to explore the inner life. High (1986:41, my underline) According to Oxford Advance Dictionary, inner means something inside, or private and secret (for emotion). So, inner life means something located inside in someones life. There was a tendency to dig the inner life of human being, because they felt dissatisfied with the old patriotism, which focus more in gaining material wealth. Most of writers during that time tried to explore humanity value. The movement much affected literatures characteristic during that time, including Edgar Allan Poe. He was put so much interested to write about psychology and the darker side of human nature. High (1986:55) The black Cat has some similarities with Poes other work such as Tell Tale Heart and Berenice which consist of lunatic murderer theme and the motives of the murderer had created many interpretations.
Readers have to face the clue from the first paragraph about the main issue of the story, the psychic condition of the narrator. From the second and third sentence on the first paragraph 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 unburden my soul Those lines give a clue to what will happen next on the story and give us interpretation about narrator condition. He acclaimed that hes not mad but he expected the madness because his senses couldnt tell more. He also said that he was not mad and he didnt dream. In Freuds The interpretation of Dreams (1900), there is an explanation about the meaning of dream.
The metaphor of depth is reproduced in the distinction between the manifest content of dream and the unconscious latent content. Linking the two is a system to transformations the dream work. Interpretation turns the strange and alien manifest dream into something with physical meaning an unconscious wish that the subject is attempting to express.
In this part he realized that his evil is actually his unconscious wish or his desire. He also knew that he will die, might be because his death sentence, and before he died he would unburden his soul. He believed that by retelling the story, it would unburden his soul or free him from his guilt. People tend to share things that they had already done to others, especially when it comes to guilty feeling. In psychoanalysis, the condition works like in the term transference, part of defense mechanism. Transference, the phenomenon whereby the patient under analysis redirects the emotions recalled in analysis towards the psychoanalyst Barry (1995:97). In psychoanalysis treatment, the patient tells the story freely to the psychoanalyst and transferred their emotion. The function is to reveal the true problem, and make them feel relief after telling the story. In this case, the psychoanalyst is the reader or one who being told by the narrator. The narrator redirected his emotion, so he would feel relief after he told the story to readers.
Moreover, he hoped that other people senses and logic will understand why he committed such a terrible action. It appears in the line below.
Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror - to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. 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. (my underline)
He didnt want to tell the reason clearly, he hoped that other people or he called it by intellect, people who had more calm and logical thought could help him to control the phantasm. Phantasm is something came from the outside himself which possessed him and claimed as a cause of the murderer. The matter of Phantasm will be discussed later.
Meanwhile, from the background of the author, Poe is one of Romantic writers. Romanticism is a movement which affected literature. Based on Rene Wellek in 1963:
We find throughout Europe the same conceptions of poetry and of the workings and nature of poetic imagination, the same conception of nature and its relation to man, and basically the same poetic style, with use of imagery, symbolism and myth which is clearly distinct from that of eighteenth century-neoclassicism. (part two, p.326)
Romantic writer focused on using feeling in their work rather than logic, so in the story Poe satirized intellects that always use their logic but use no feeling.
Moreover, clue about the narrators peculiarity, his psychic condition also appears in the second paragraph, the story about narrators childhood. His friend always jest him because he had tenderness of heart. He was a boy but he acted not really like boys in common. Other boys rarely have tender heart, but the narrator has it. Boys also usually more tough than girls, they usually fight for their rights. In other hand, the narrator could not defend himself. He could not face the society. The society judged him and constructed the image of the boy.
The narrator love animal very much and his parents gave him variety of pets. He enjoyed feeding and caring animals rather than spending time with his friends. Because his friend or the society couldnt accept the narrators characteristic. His animal lover character grew up with his age. There is a cause and effect why the condition, his later life, was taken place. As stated before that the narrator didnt have a social life and he transferred his love to pets because pets are harmless creature. By loving pets he didnt have to take a chance being hurt. It is different with human relationship, his society, which always judged him with his character. In psychoanalysis, we called the condition by displacement part of defense mechanism. Displacement, something emotionally and physically tolerable may be substituted for something which the person concerned finds consciously intolerable (Laughlin 1963:17). It is a state when one finds something safer to replace his fear. The character had no social relationship in his life. He didnt try to fix or solve the problem, but he preferred to give his love to animal something that harmless, its not like the society where he lived. He didnt want to face the society or make a defense for himself.
The condition continued to his adult life. Always jested by his friend had an effect in his adult life. He became traumatic because the society didnt expect him. He withdrew himself from social life. Freud said that The traumas of childhood operate in a deferred fashion as though they were fresh experiences; but they do so unconsciously. Unconsciously mean that narrator didnt realize his trauma create his behavior from childhood until he grew up. The narrators sorrow life in his childhood affected his next life and it will give us a clue to the story.
Next, on his later life he married a woman who also adores pets. They have same characteristics, pet lover, which give a comfort state to the narrator. Their similarity, as pet lovers, made the narrator feel safer to spend his time with his wife rather than other people. His previous experienced with other people, in this case the society is not really good. The society rejected him. They have birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. It was a big black cat. We could slightly understand about narrators wife characteristic from this sentences My wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made a frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise It might be the wife have a little bad intuition about the black cat presence, but she didnt care too much with the myth. It appears in My wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition and the myth is Christianity connects the cat with Satan, the hell cat, and with darkness and witches; the black cat is a witches familiar. (Cooper 1992) Pluto, the black cat, got big attention from the narrator. He described Pluto as This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. He adored Pluto. The narrator spent most of his time with the black cat.
There was a development of the narrator in the story that started showed the narrators illness. The narrator became more moody, more irritable, more disregarding the feelings of others. He started to neglect his pets, but not Pluto, because Pluto was his favorite. He also lost his patience to his wife I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. Actually his evil, already exist and gradually appeared to the surface. His wife is one who became his madness target. Day after day, his illness became bigger and bigger. But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like alcohol. The narrator is quite addicted with alcohol and he felt that his disease was growing like his addiction to alcohol. He became moody and day after day Pluto also felt illness from its master. Pluto became old and started to make the narrator upset.
One night, when the narrator came home from drinking, he found Pluto. When the narrator wanted to touch Pluto, its teeth slightly wound the narrator and suddenly he became mad, like his treatment to his wife, the evil already existed. When Pluto slightly wound him, it became a trigger of his madness. Suddenly he felt something came from the outside and possessed him. It stated on The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. The narrator felt that he didnt know himself and suddenly cut its eyes from its socket. The symbol of eye appeared, like in the Tell Tale Heart, where the narrator wanted to kill the old man. On Milner (1992:180), there is a subject discussing the matter of eye.
Kita mengetahui bahwa mata terluka atau kehilangan mata berkaitan dengan kekuatan infantil, yang menggema dalam diri manusia jauh melebihi ketakutan kehilangan anggota indera yang paling berharga sekalipun. Kajian mimpi, fantasme dan mite, memperlihatkan bahwa ketakutan menjadi buta sering kali merupakan subtitusi ketakutan terhadap kastrasi.
Like already stated above, eye have a big power in every human being. Castration anxiety is the part when human being afraid to lose his power that has already been possessed before. In psychoanalysis area, the castration anxiety is the part when people afraid lose their sexual function. It can be applied both in men and women.
Man afraid to lose his phallus. Phallus, the genital, is a symbol of their power. Many men afraid that lose their phallus because without the phallus they will become nothing. In other hand, women also fright of losing their womb. Both phallus and womb are the power source of human being. In this case, the afraid of losing eyes is equal with afraid of losing phallus and womb, which is very important for human.
The concept is related with the castration in children. When children grow up they have to be separated from their mother. The mother is the one who can give them comfort. Meanwhile, father is the one who push the separation. Father has a power to control, the condition called the law of father. If we relate the condition with social life, father is the symbol of superego or the society which have the power to make the rule. The narrators hatred toward Plutos eye represents the hatred toward the society, because eye is the substitution of phallus, father, or society, the rule maker. Again, a part of displacement had a role. The narrator felt upset with his condition, got ditch from society, and he expressed his anger to Pluto. He attributed his feeling by cut Plutos eye.
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