The Grotesque Elements in Poe’s “Black Cat” and Scudder’s “The White Cat”

Anegbe Endurance,Abdulhameed A Majeed,Wan Roselezam Bt Wan Yahya

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.42

Anegbe Endurance, Abdulhameed A Majeed + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.42

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Abstract

The present essay focuses on the grotesque elements in Edgar Allan Poe’s the “Black Cat” and Horace Scudder’s “The White Cat”. Poe’s story is highly embedded with a lot of grotesque elements from the beginning to the end. These elements were presented through strange characters, mysterious happenings, and degradation through death. Poe represents the struggle between the supernatural and the natural which he reinforces through the narrator who struggles to commit wrongdoings. Even in the mist of trying to restrict himself, the narrator still does not know what he did. In “The White Cat,” Scudder employs grotesque elements as well but his application is subtly done unlike Poe whose application is more pronounced. The underlying meaning of this short story is on the spell of enchantment. However, Scudder, like Poe, displays the supernatural events through the characters of the “fairies” who has magical power to change the once a beautiful princess to a white cat. Grotesque includes absurd and bizarre elements and pierces the conventional version of reality. However; in its ability to shock or offend, grotesque helps to expose the vulnerability in human depicted via these absurd element which will be explained in detail in the present study.

Highlights

The present essay focuses on the grotesque elements in Edgar Allan Poe’s the “Black Cat” and Horace Scudder’s “The White Cat”
Though there are a lot of grotesques elements, only the following elements are selected to discuss in the present study: fear/horror, strange characters, degradation through deaths, and mysterious and the inexplicable events
Poe used the black cat as a strange character owning to its, coming back to avenge his death, by exposing the narrator over the murder of his wife to the police of which he is awaiting death behind bar, while in Horace the “white cat” was unique in her own world in which she took upon herself the role of human being, attending to human needs, accommodating them as well

Summary

Grotesques in Poe’s “Black Cat”

The “Black Cat” is Poe’s most popularly read short story. The story follows a style of literature that tends to explore the human and fascination with the supernatural or the unknown grotesque application in a literary work that helps to explore human's emotions in the face of forces which cannot understand most especially the fear: Neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight — an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off — incumbent eternally upon my hear! (Poe 1845 43). Perverseness happens to be one of the major issues in this short story where the writer had to dwell on the feeling of guilt of the narrator as a form of fear by focusing more on his declining state of mind, or mental breakdown from the start to the end of the story. He was able to demonstrated the intense circumstances of a person who is suffering from loss of mind can be horrific, this could be seen from the act of the narrator who was overtaken by the spirit of perverseness which surprises even him, considering his crime which he could have no longer control over, this later brought him to his destruction through his series of acts which make the elements of horror very apparent in this story

Strange Character

Death through Degradation

Mysterious and Inexplicable Event

Similarities between Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Scudder’s “The White Cat”

Conclusion