Abstract
In one of his most famous stories ever written, “The Black Cat” (1843), Edgar Allan Poe chose an animal as a protagonist. However, this pet was going to have an afterlife as one of the most devilish creatures created by the pen of the Bostonian. More than a century later, Flannery O’Connor included a story in her MFA Thesis entitled “Wildcat.” Years later, in 1955, her most recognized story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” was published. Both narratives include a cat, in this case not as a main “character,” but as the element that triggers the subsequent tragedy. In 1977, the magazine <em>Cavalier</em> published a short story by Stephen King under the title of “The Cat from Hell.” King’s cat also drives its owner to physical and mental destruction, as Pluto, the wildcat, and Pitty Sing had done before it. This article is based on how three stories (O’Connor’s “Wildcat” –1947– and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” –1955– and King’s “The Cat From Hell” –1977–) recreate the characters of the anonymous cat and of Pluto in their pages Moreover, this article also intends to prove the influence of Poe’s “The Black Cat” on authors like Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King.
Highlights
Poe himself refers to the: “[...] ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.” (850) The relationship of both Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King with Poe has been proved by studies such as those by Harold Bloom (1986), Gary
Been selected because of plot similarities, and because these cats look and act as if they were descendants of the ones created by the author of “The Black Cat.”. These similarities and connections can be divided into six categories, that will help to build the structure of this paper: “external aspect,” “unknown origin,” “perversity,” “influence on people,” “tragic outcome,” and
When Pitty Sing is first introduced in the story, blackness appears in regard to him and its doppelgänger, the grandmother: “She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat.” (CS 118) This brief description links the cat of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” with its two predecessors: besides the black valise included in the scene, the cat is hidden beneath it, creating in this way a dark refuge for it, a black cave-like space that will only be abandoned at the end of the story, in order to cause the fatal accident
Summary
The influence of Edgar Allan Poe on many twentieth and twenty-first century authors is, beyond. How these writers use Poesque resources, characters, locations, among other aspects, has been studied in so many different ways that more and more arguments can be added every year, as Benjamin Franklin Fisher claims: “Poe’s Gothicism cast shadows over many later works of fantasy, science, and detective fiction – not to mention the numerous “modern Gothics” that continue to pour forth – just as it enters the work of Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Hart Crane, Stephen King, and much else”. People have quit doing it’.” (CW 127) Concerning Stephen King, this author has been pointed out as one of the most prominent inheritors of Edgar Allan Poe.. People have quit doing it’.” (CW 127) Concerning Stephen King, this author has been pointed out as one of the most prominent inheritors of Edgar Allan Poe.7 Many of his novels clearly acknowledge that influence. 4 “A” will be later discovered to be her life-long friend Betty Hester
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