One of the most influential American writer of the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe, in his short story, “The Black Cat”, published in 1845, addressing the topic of psychological complexities and argues that although innately developments of a person’s character traits can be informed as to their concentrated feature, every individual has a hidden and malevolent oddity that would bring itself apparent to society. He supports this claim by describing how the narrator progressed from being a people’s pleaser to an abusive owner and husband, then he used imagery and anaphora to bring about the narrator’s transition to his most primitive state, and finally, he was seen to use his strategy for plot development so that his readers can follow the gradual decrease of the narrator’s mental capacity, and his most violent acts resurfacing from within himself. Poe’s purpose is to consult his readers that psychological trauma is something to be taken very seriously to make his audience aware of these hysterical symptoms and how if we were to constantly hide the impulsiveness, it will soon take over our better judgment we have for ourselves and turn it into menacing rage and malevolence. He adopts a dreadful tone for his audience, the readers of doctors who reject hysterical conditions and others interested in the topic of psychological disturbances.    

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” the narrator’s hostile acts emanating from pent up emotions and excessive drinking illustrate many Freudian concepts such as repression and displacement.

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