Depravity is defined as an action or series
of actions that are morally corrupt or even wicked. In s , the narrator, who is never named,
describes several actions which he himself identifies as depraved. The development of his
depravity is both interesting and frightful; readers do see a true descent into depravity as the
narrator, sentenced to be executed the next day, describes the events that brought him into his
present state.
A brief summary of the overall plot can help to illustrate how
depravity plays into the story and its overall development. The story is told in flashbacks as
the narrator is awaiting his execution. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my
soul. He narrates not only the events that led to his conviction; he also explains his childhood
and the early years of his marriage. He describes himself as gentle to a fault. So gentle, in
fact, that he was mocked for his kindness as a child. My tenderness of heart was even so
conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions.
He marries, and he and
his wife share a deep love of animals. His wife buys him a black cat named Pluto, whom he
describes as an animal of the most agreeable kind. In spite of his affection for the cat, the
narrator commits two acts of violence against it: he carves out its eye, and then he hangs it
from a tree by a noose. A fire soon after destroys their house and the narrators attention is
called to witnesses seeing a soot mark that resembles a cat with a noose around its neck right
above where his bed had been. The narrator explains the mark away, and, calm once again, he
seeks the company of another cat. Soon, a cat that looks strikingly like Pluto, except for a
large patch of white fur on its chest, seems to offer the narrator an opportunity for
redemption. The cat loves him and follows him diligently, but this loyalty only activates deep
rage within the narrator. One day, while he and his wife are walking to the basement, the cat
runs down the stairs and almost trips the narrator, inciting him into a rage. He tries to kill
the cat with an axe, but his wife stops him. Instead, then, he turns the axe on her and kills
her.
He hides her body behind a wall in the basement and believes that he has
successfully concealed his crime. As an added bonus, the cat seems to have been so frightened by
the murder that it runs off, leaving the narrator free of its constant attention. Four days
later, though, the police come to the door and ask to investigate. The narrator,
overly-confident in a manner similar to the narrator in , invites them in and raps on the wall
with his cane to show the solid construction of the house. It is at this point that a sound is
heard from behind the wall. The police tear it down and reveal the corpse of his wifewith the
black cat sitting on the top of her head.
Throughout his retelling of the
events that led him to his prison cell, the narrator cites several examples of his depravity,
and a clear development of the depravity is visible to readers. First, he describes how his
drinking, to which he refers as the Fiend Intemperance, changes his personality slowly but
surely. 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. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not
only neglected, but ill-used them.
His depravity continues when, in spite of
acknowledging specific feelings of affection still remaining for Pluto, he commits an act of
violence against the cat after it nips his hand.
I seized
him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his
teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. 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!
The narrator knows that he has acted in a morally
corrupt, depraved way. The next day he is remorseful, but, as time passes, he slips deeper into
his alcoholic stupor and he forgets how upset he was by his own actions. Rather than use the
violence against Pluto as an impetus to change his behaviors, his depravity grows. He describes
his depravity in detail this time, which shows its development and escalation.
And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the
spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that
my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human
heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the
character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly
action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?.... It was
this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itselfto offer violence to its own natureto do
wrong for the wrong's sake onlythat urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I
had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.
He hangs Pluto
from a tree with a noose, and the cat dies. The narrator isnt acting in a drunken rage, and the
cat has done nothing to trigger an angry reaction; the narrator kills him for no reason other
than, as he says, because he knows he should not.
Readers might think that,
following the murder of his cat, the narrator might have been horrified enough by his actions to
stop drinking and possibly reevaluate his life. The addition of a house fire that destroys
everything only supports this notion, as well as the narrators desire to adopt another cat in
order to make up for his actions against Pluto. He wants this opportunity for redemption so
badly that the fact that his new cat resembles Pluto down to the same missing eye (except for
the one difference of the white patch of fur on the new cats chest) doesnt bother him, though he
does notice quite specifically when the white patch seems to morph into the shape of a hanged
cat.
A descent into depravity, though, is hard to stop once it starts, and
its not long before the narrator feels the same stirrings of rage and violence toward the new
cat.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising
within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; butI know not how or why it
wasits evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings
of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred.
The fact that his hatred is directly proportional to the cats increasing love for him
only serves to push the narrator into deeper depravity. Conscious all the while of his thoughts
and actions, the narrator knowingly gives in to his impulses and surrenders any remaining hope
of his goodness.
...the feeble remnant of the good within
me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimatesthe darkest and most evil of thoughts. The
moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from
the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned
myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of
sufferers.
The full extent of his depravity can be seen
in the final incident with his wife as he murders her. He flies into a rage at the cat for
nearly tripping him and tries to kill it, but his wife stills his hand. Readers see his
depravity in his intention: he doesnt kill his wife out of a lack of impulse control or because
he is in a blind rage; he kills her because she tried to stop him from killing the
cat.
Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than
demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon
the spot, without a groan.
A story that begins with a
character on death row will almost always have clear examples of moral corruptness, of
depravity, throughout, and The Black Cat is no exception. Readers see the tragic descent into
depravity of a character who was supposedly born docile and kind, but, for a variety of
reasonsthough he names alcohol, this is certainly not the only causeloses this part of himself
in an ocean of rage and evil. His first act of violence, cutting out Plutos eye as a retaliatory
action for Pluto biting him, leads the narrator deeper and deeper into the world of moral
corruption and depravity, the end result of which is the murder of his loving wife and,
ultimately, his own scheduled death.
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