Author Edgar Allan Poe using Freud’s psychology’s theory to illustrate a man’s transform between pure and evil in “ Black cat”, it’s more like a record of main character’s inner activities because when he struggle with his behaviors, he also can’t help with the pleasure brought by drunkenness. In this paper, the author uses first person perspective and a large number of symbolic techniques to make the reader feel the situation in the text to the greatest extent. The theme of the unconscious takes up a large part of the text, because the man often falls into a state of unconsciousness after getting drunk. In this way, we can enter into his inner world, and everything he do after drunkenness is the real emotions inside.
Perhaps a black cat is not just a cat. In western culture, cats have always been a symbol of ill fortune. Because the black cat has not been around the witch, plus the black cat in the above only one eye, then the cat should represent evil. In《Black Cat》by PoE，“My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket ! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity. When reason returned with the morning — when I had slept off the fumes of the night’s debauch — I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.” The man tried to resist this life but lacked the courage to face his family and wife, so he vented his resentment on the innocent cat after getting drunk. He treats the black cat like he resists the reality of his relatives, he did not start with the black cat, which means that he actually has a good side, but after a long time, he still dealt with the black cat, which means that he has no bottom line.The conscious response expresses the man’s inner world, breaking through his own bottom line, so even knowing that he had gotten rid of his favorite black cat’s eyes with his own hands, he left it behind with a little guilt.
For the connections of two stories on the conflict between “Wishful Impulse” and the forces of repression are very clear. In the beginning，the main character describes himself as tenderness, kindness and love for animals. But he became cruel and irritable when he got drunk. In a sense, family consideration and wife’s care are becoming his pressure，like a prison that lock himself inside. But these are invisible, and he did not notice them. He yearned for freedom, so drunkenness became the only key to escape from prison. This connect to Sigmund Freud’s《Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis》in second lecture, “I had substantiated the fact that the forgotten memories were not lost. They were in the possession of the patient, ready to emerge and form associations with his other mental content, but hindered from becoming conscious, and forced to remain in the unconscious by some sort of a force.”
These invisible pressures are unconsciously repressed by men in the heart, like a seed, lost in alcohol like giving fertilizers to his seeds. These repressions are slowly released by alcohol, like the Pandora Box that opens the heart and cannot be closed again. After getting drunk, he released his inhibitions step by step, so his bottom line was relaxed step by step. In《Black Cat》by PoE, the narrator said, “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is like Alcohol !”
After killing his wife and hiding in the wall, He succeeded escape many police checks, but on the last occasion he was impulsive enough to reveal himself. In a sense, is this a wishful impulse? The man himself said what he wanted to say, even a word, when the police were about to leave. But when he spoke, he did not know what he was talking about.This can be explained by Sigmund Freud’s《Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis》in lecture 3, “Because, in addition to his desire to say it straight out, he is actuated by strong opposite motives. It is a proceeding which is liable to be dangerous to offend people who are one’s hosts, and who can call to their aid the strong arms of numerous servants. One might easily suffer the same fate that I used in the previous lecture to illustrate repression. On this ground, the critic does not express the particular insult directly, but in a disguised form, as an allusion with omission. The same constellation comes into play, according to our hypothesis, when our patient produces the irruptive idea as a surrogate for the forgotten idea which is the object of the quest.”
This article successfully describes that death is the only way out of nightmares. In this paper, death can not be understood from time as the end of life, but the end of spiritual pain in life. In order to save himself from the mental crisis, the protagonist adopted an extreme way. It turned out to be in a more painful situation and unable to extricate itself.
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