Lalita Drepaul FIQWS Content 10-14-18

Unleashing the Repressed

The sinister and eerie writings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is about a narrator who conveys himself as a normal man, with a happy wife, and a house full of pets. He portrays himself as having a perfectly normal lifestyle. But eventually soon after, his personality starts to change drastically, by having a negative attitude and a hatred that can be seen to be coming from his excessive drinking problem. The narrator resorts to alcohol to repress memories of his docile childhood upbringing. Sigmund Freud states dreaming is one of the few times people can express their truest desires. While drunk the narrator’s wishful impulses take over and he gives into theheinous crime he’s thought of doing. The “Black Cat” connects to Freud’s ideas of wishful impulses and repression because the narrator’s unconscious wishful impulses were brought on byhis substance abuse which led to his personality change, from loving to killing.

According to Freud, wishful impulses are the minds unconscious thoughts that go againstany individuals’ beliefs and way of life. An individual doesn’t realize their impulses, only after it’s released from their subconscious. Irrational ideas and fantasies are repressed into the individuals unconscious mind. Repression occurs when an individual has a traumatic incident,where their unconscious tries to dismiss that memory out of the mind. Freud states, “a wishful impulse which was in sharp contrast to the subject’s other wishes and which proved incompatible with the ethical and aesthetic standards of his personality… fell a victim to repression, waspushed out of consciousness with all its attached memories and was forgotten.”

The narrator of “The Black Cat” grew up with a house of pets which he loved and admired, which later helped grow his personality into a compassionate animal lover. As a married man, he cared for a black cat which was his most favorite pet, because of the affection it had for him. As stated in the text, “Pluto — this was the cat’s name — was my favorite pet andplaymate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.” The black cat soon becomes the animal he hates and despises, because Pluto showed no interest in him whilehe was drunk. “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town,I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.” He becomes irritable and temperamental towards his wife and pets, making them afraid and warry of his sudden personality change. His personality ofloving animals, changes when those animals don’t love him back.

After the narrator does his inhumane crime of killing his cat, he uses drinking to repress and dismiss the violent act from his memory. While the drinking helps at first, the memory ofhanging Pluto can’t be contained in his unconsciousness. After the thoughts of murdering Plutosurface, he reconciles by accepting another cat who mimics the acts of Pluto into his life to right the wrong he did. The cat immediately shows affection for the narrator, then later he starts toresent the cat, due to the eerie resemblance to Pluto. According to Freud, “An acceptance of theincompatible wishful impulse or a prolongation of the conflict would have produced a high degree of unpleasure; this unpleasure was avoided by means of repression, which was thusrevealed as one of the devices serving to protect the mental personality.” This relates back to thenarrator because the act he committed was unbearable for him to handle, he started resenting his new cat.

Towards the end of the story, the narrator hits his breaking point. He lashes out his frustration by trying to slash the cat with an axe. He then displaces his anger onto his wife, ultimately killing her. Faced with the challenge of being caught and seen as a murderer, hedevises a plan. His mind is clear for him to be tactical and rid his wife’s body behind a bricked-up wall. “Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates — the darkest and most evil ofthoughts.” His murderous behavior initially started with his first cat, Pluto, which is then transferred onto his wife after his breaking point.

In Freud’s lectures, he illustrates that individuals who develop symptoms of repressionfrom his or her wishful desires is a weakness for them to manufacture psychological issues. In“The Black Cat,” Freud’s theory is reflected based on the narrator’s weakness brought on by hisalcohol abuse. Giving in to his repressed memories this led to his drastic personality changewhich he placed onto his cat and wife. “But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is likealcohol!” Ultimately Freud’s theory and the “The Black Cat” depict the downfall one has themoment our deep desires are acted upon.