Socratic Questions

• Close-Ended Question: Where did the author find the cat after he killed his wife?
• Open-Ended Question: Why did the author kill his first cat?
• World Connection Question:  How do people in today's society react differently when presented with anger and hatred?
• Universal Theme/Core Question:Why is is necessary for some people to take their anger out on other people that they are not mad with?
• Literary Analysis Question: Why does the author put another cat into the story?

    In "The Black Cat" the author finds the cat in the walls of the cellar where he buried his wife. "Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb."(Poe 14).

 The author had killed his first cat in the story because he became a drunkard and basically went crazy. The author became sick of the cat constantly being around him and following him everywhere he went. The author decided to kill the cat just for the sake of killing it, because he knew it was wrong but wanted to do it anyways. "hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin." (Poe 6).

 In "The Black Cat", when presented with anger and hatred the author reacts with violence and cruelty. First he kills his cat and then he kills his wife, all because he hated his cats. In today's society we may not react so extremely, but we still react with violence and cruelty. It may just be by getting in a fight of yelling at someone, but we still have the same type of reactions.

  In this story the author takes out his anger on his wife instead of on the cat. Although, he wasn't mad at his wife at all, he was just mad at 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" (Poe 11). Although the author was not mad at the wife at all, he still ended up killing her just because she interfered with him killing the cat. People who are in a rage don't really think clearly about what they are doing. They act first then think later.

In "The Black Cat" the author puts the second cat into the story to give the speaker another chance to atone for the sins he committed with the first cat. Although the speaker doesn't end up atoning for the sins he committed, he is still given the chance to do so.