Morality, Rationality, and Pluto

     Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" is a short story that highlights the differences between rationality and morality and the atrocious result that is created when morality vanishes entirely.  The tale's narrator, now a prisoner awaiting his execution, recounts a series of events to the reader in order to "unburden his soul" (230).  Though these words imply a guilt-filled confession of a morbid deed, the narrator's diction, morose imagery, and peculiar tone throughout the course of the story are juxtaposed with one another to reveal the gruesome reality of the tale: a man with frightening lack of morality and slowly diminishing, though meticulous rationale.
     The narrator begins by describing the series of events as a simple "ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects" (230).  The word "natural" is most apparent of group, and is meant to imply that the events that befell the narrator were a mere series of ordinary coincidences.  Yet, this word stands in stark contrast to an earlier passage, in which the narrator claims the events of the story had "terrified" "tortured" and "destroyed me" (230).  The tone with which the words are spoken is clearly one of abruptness and fearfulness.  Therefore conflict posed between these two sets of words is confusing, for how could a natural event appear to instill such supernatural dread?  This problem presents a sort of foreshadowing into the tale, as the narrator often deems many of the story's happenings to be purely circumstantial.
     The narrator, an alcoholic, subjects his many pets to various kinds of abuse.  The lone creature exempt from his wrath is Pluto, a black cat and his favorite pet.  This safety is not permanent however, and an encounter between the narrator and his pet ends with violence.  As the narrator describes, with vivid detail, the gouging out of Pluto's eye, he remarks: "I blush, I burn, I shudder and I pen the damnable atrocity" (231).  While the words "blush" and "shudder" represent reasonable feelings of shock and shame, the term "burn" implies anger.  However, this anger is perhaps not directed towards the narrator, but rather towards Pluto.  This begins the recurring motif of the narrator feeling inappropriate emotions: the narrator essentially feels the hatred of his drunken stupor at the mere memory of Pluto.
     Pluto is eventually murdered by his owner in a gruesome manner: hanging.  The narrator then returns to bed, only to be awoken by a blazing fire.  The narrator escapes, but the cause of the blaze is left unknown.  In the ruins of his house however, the narrator discovers the impression of a "gigantic cat" burnt into the plaster of the ruins (233).  The narrator describes the cat as an "apparition" and this is all the more fitting given the name of the cat (233). Pluto's name, an allusion to the Roman god of death (and Greek god Hades) goes hand in hand with the circumstances following Pluto's death.  The blaze that awakens the sleeping narrator, the "apparition," and Pluto's look-alike are undoubtedly references to the spirits of Underworld, and death itself.  Even more startling is the narrator, who is capable of sleeping soundly after killing Pluto (233).
     The narrator's murder of his wife is the culmination of the tale and showcases the final show of strange emotion.  The narrator, intending to kill Pluto's look-alike with an axe, is stopped by his wife.  With little thought, the narrator turns on his wife and "buried the axe into her brain." (236).  The description of the act is spoken in a cold, calculating tone, as the narrator apparently cares little for the murder.  In fact, there is no real emotional reaction from the narrator, who immediately busies himself with hiding the body.  In showing no reaction, the narrator's reveals his absence of morality.  The narrator's meticulousness and rationality of thought is revealed in his detailed thought processes, particularly when discussing how best to hide the body.  The culmination of the tale, after the body is hidden in a cellar wall, sees the narrator boasting pridefully of his actions, only for his boasting to reveal the body's location to a pair of officers.  Having been outed, the narrator then angrily brands the cat as a "hideous beast whose craft seduced me to murder, and whose informing voice consigned me to the hangman" (237).  In short, the remnants of the narrator's rationality vanish once his pride has been crushed by the discovery of the two policemen.