Down Deep in the Dark: A Semiotic Approach to Edgar Allan Poe’s the Black Cat

Abdul Karim Lazim

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.1p.53

Abstract

Semiotics is the investigation of the nature, type and function of signs in all walks of life. It is the science of interpreting signs and showing how meaning is generated by and through a shared cultural code. Being a verbal corpus of imaginatively works of art, literature with all its genres, i.e. poetry, drama, fiction, the short story, etc. lends itself to semiotics scrutiny. Verbal works of artifact as such can be analyzed in terms of semiotic theory. This paper purports to explore Edgar Allan Poe’ The Black Cat as a structure of interconnected signs which are organically rooted into the code of horror. If culture, in one sense, is the complex network of beliefs, behaviors and patterns of thinking, these psychopathic cognitive patterns are wittingly structured in the semiotic system of Poe’s narrative work of art. The study proceeds with the hypothesis that Poe’s The Black Cat is a semiotic metaphor or a representation of the actual world of insanity which is resulted from obsession in things. The short story is analyzed in terms of the newly semiotic approach, namely The Semiotic triangle. This tripartite model is a three-dimensional model whose axes are: syntagmaticity, paradigmaticity and signification. The dimensions are supposed to be the foundations of the construction of Poe’s literary text. One result of the study has shown that fear is not an organic human nature in The Black Cat, but a newly born behavior which has led to a serial of crimes committed by the unnamed author. This abnormal behaviorism is encoded in the semiotic veins of Poe’s newly literary genre, i.e. the narratology of horror. The scope of the study is limited to Poe’s The Black Cat as a par excellent narrative work of that creative genre. The paper is rounded up with concluding remarks elicited from the semiotic analysis.

Highlights

Down Deep in the Dark, being a title is likely to suggest that in the Gothic narrative genre the reader may tread the cognitive labyrinth to reach the core of darkness
The study proceeds with the hypothesis that Poe’s The Black Cat is a semiotic metaphor or a representation of the actual world of insanity which is resulted from obsession in things
One result of the study has shown that fear is not an organic human nature in The Black Cat, but a newly born behavior which has led to a serial of crimes committed by the unnamed author

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Down Deep in the Dark, being a title is likely to suggest that in the Gothic narrative genre the reader may tread the cognitive labyrinth to reach the core of darkness. In this infinite variety of forms, it is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; narrative starts with the very history of mankind, there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative; all classes, all human groups, have their stories, and very often those stories are enjoyed by men of different and even opposite cultural backgrounds: narrative remains largely unconcerned with good or bad literature. The sequential episodes of the Gothic novels and short stories almost take place in gloomy, decaying and grim spheres as there were a sort of correspondence between outside nature and the internal nature of the character(s) All these Gothic hellish characteristics can be detected in Poe’s The Black Cat, as the semiotic study will show. The scope of the study is limited to Poe’s short story

PART I: SEMIOTICS AND NARRATION

CONCLUSION