The Black Cat

During my four years of high school, I remember one particular novel that my twelth grade English class discussed. My English teacher wanted my class to read or at least watch some form of Edgar Allen Poe's work. He came up with a movie called The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe.

Throughout the whole movie is a series of suspense and foreshadowing that makes the watcher second guess what is about to happen. The viewer wants to believe that the nameless narrator is going crazy. The movie circulates around the nameless narrator who at first is in jail awaiting his death. His death is set to happen after the day of his wife's horrific murder. From then on, the film is focusing on the past events.

One scene in the movie struck me as something funny and clever, yet is a source of drunken stupidity. I found it was a great twist to a joke. In the scene, the narrator tells the bar tender that, for another serving of alcohol, he could stand on one finger. Betting his life savings, the narrator swore to the bar tender that he could point to any spot of the floor, and the narrator could indeed stand on one finger. Taking a fool of the narrator, the bar tender agreed and pointed to a single, dusty clad spot on the wooden floor. The narrator then went on about how the bar tender should get his hand closer to the spot. Soon after, the narrator stepped on the bar tenders finger. All in all, he did manage to stand on one finger, though not his own, he was tossed out of the bar and into the cold, dark streets.

The Black Cat is a great psychological movie that has the watcher see first hand of what the dark side of the mind can look like. It veers in on the narrator's guilt and the domestic violence he contains. The novel is known as Edgar Allen Poe's second psychological novel (Tale Tale Heart beign the first), however it does not deal with premeditated murder.