Literature - Psychoanalytic Question and Answer - Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]

Literature - Psychoanalytic Question and Answer - Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]

Is it possible to relate a character’s patterns of adult behavior to early experiences in the family
(as represented in the story)? What do these behavior patterns and family dynamics reveal?

Summary:

The narrator loved animals that he would do anything for them, however, harms his beloved wife
and animals. Eventually, kills his wife for his hatred towards the unforgivable black cat, Pluto.

An unnamed character, has loved the animals when he was young and married a woman who also loves
animals like narrator. The narrator’s love for animals imply that the narrator didn’t have any conflicts in
his early life with his family, which would have influenced him to rely upon the existence in animals than
anyone else. His excessive affection towards the animals can be refuted since he “sometimes valued the
animals more than his wife” and also depicted when he was suffering an alcoholism, he harms his wife,
but still did not damaged his animals. Nevertheless, the bigger hatred as there is more dependence.
When an alcoholism got worse the narrator depicted outrageous resentment that he would ‘cut off’
an eye of Pluto, which was a black cat that he favored the most.