Topic > Analysis of the Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe through Freud's theory of psychoanalysis

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe is a morbid story about the change undergone by the narrator and the gruesome and disturbing nature of his behaviors. Through the development of the narrator in the story, his behavior can be investigated using an aspect of Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, the Id, the Ego and the Superego. In Poe's short story, “The Black Cat,” the narrator's character discovers a love for animals at an early age. As the character develops, he begins to drink more and the visible change in the animals, with the exception of a black cat, is enormous. The narrator clearly has love and passion for all his animals, especially a black cat named "Pluto", but due to his rapid decline into alcoholism, the character's love instinct for animals becomes a aggressive instinct. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe id is the most inaccessible part of the brain. It is buried in the unconscious state of mind and is responsible for man's most primal instincts. Sigmund Freud defines the work of the id as "basic impulses, needs and desires." The id responds to the use of instinctive desires, which in most cases are difficult to control and lead to what Freud states that the ed is about sexual desires and instincts and instincts of aggression, which act as an instinct pro-dominant in history. On a drunken night, when the narrator returns from the inn, Pluto finally notices the change in his owner and "tries to stay away from me, to avoid me." The narrator character becomes angry at the animal's reaction and his id takes control of him. “My soul seemed to fly away from my body.” The creepy nature of the id takes over and the instinct for aggression comes into play when the narrator catches the cat and gouges out one of its eyes. The narrator's aggression towards Pluto is evidence that his love towards animals at such a young age has changed where he finds pleasure in torturing animals. The ego is a mediating device used to function as reasoning, compared to the primal instinct and destructive nature of the id. The ego makes up the majority of conscious decision making from the perspective of reality. The first ego characteristic displayed by the narrator is after Pluto's eye begins to recover. The narrator feels guilty for cutting out the cat's eye, saying, “I felt a new feeling growing within me. Who hasn't found themselves making mistakes a hundred times, doing something bad for the sole reason because they know they shouldn't do it?". He feels guilty towards the cat he once loved and who had once loved him. The narrator's character's ID and ego both show when he decides that he must kill the cat because "I hung it because I knew it had loved me." His aggressive nature which comes from the Id, is counterbalanced by his ego, in which he realizes that what he is doing is wrong and is "so deadly a sin" (Poe, line 56), however since the Superego is not present to stop Since the id disturbs nature, the narrator character continues to hang the cat. That same night he is awakened by the cries of his neighbors, who scream about a fire. All the time he can only think about the cat he hung in the cellar and whether this was some kind of mysterious message. Once again, on another drunken night, he sees a black cat, almost like Pluto, and wants to buy it from the innkeeper. The innkeeper tells him that he has never seen the cat before and from there the cat starts following him. His remorse for the death of Pluto, who comes.