“The Black Cat” Questions
1. Where is the narrator at the beginning of the story? What is about to happen to him?
2. What kind of person does he tell us he was as a child and up through the early years of his marriage?
3. What changes him and how does he change? [Look at the paragraph beginning “Our friendship lasted . . .” on p. 79.] What are the first consequences of this change?
4. What does he do to Pluto and why? Outline his changing reaction to this action.
5. On p. 80, half way through the second whole paragraph, reread the line that begins “Yet I am not more sure . . .because we understand it to be such?” What is he saying?
6. What does he do to Pluto and why?
7. After the fire, he sees charred into the bedroom wall above his bed the image of a black cat. Do you think the image is real or imaged? Is it really Pluto’s image or is it caused by the narrator’s guilt?
8. Why does he want another cat? What does the cat he eventually finds look like? Why is its appearance significant?
9. What is peculiar about the narrator’s reaction to his wife’s preventing him from hurting the cat?
10. What does he do with his wife?
11. When the police come to search the house and are satisfied that the wife is not there, what does the narrator do? Why do you think he does this?
12. What ends up being the narrator’s undoing? Why is this ironic?
13. In the first paragraph, the narrator explains that he is not insane: “mad I am not.” He wants to believe that the events he will tell us are “nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.” Is the narrator a victim of “natural causes and effects” or is he insane? Or is a combination? Briefly explain your response.