Determining Genre in Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat

In the article "Untold Story: The Lying Narrator in The Black Cat,” Susan Amper discusses Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Black Cat." Amper approaches the text from the viewpoint of a skeptic and her main purpose is to discredit not only the narrator of Poe’s story, but the narrator’s story in general, which she states is “part fact and part misrepresentation designed to minimize the narrator’s guilt” (475). She goes on to say that once the reader realizes “the man is lying” (Amper 475), it allows the reader to figure out what really happened to the narrator’s wife. This empowers the reader and changes the dynamic of the story from a Gothic thriller to a detective story. To prove her point, Amper refers to several questions that “every armchair detective” (477) should ask, such as the time the murder happened, the narrator’s description of the events, the order in which they occurred, and the “involvement” (484) of the police. Intermittently, she focuses on the two cats in Poe’s story and the narrator’s wife. Once the author has led readers through the actual sequence of events and discredited the narrator, she concludes her essay by stating Poe’s story is a “first rate detective story” (Amper 485) that is really not that mysterious after all.

Questions to Ponder and Discuss

>Do you view Poe's story as a Gothic text or a detective story? Why?

>How does the lying narrator influence the reader?

>To what extent would the story change if narrated by the police? The narrator's wife? The second cat?

Works Cited

Amper, Susan. “Untold Story: The Lying Narrator in “The Black Cat.” Studies in Short Fiction 29.4 (1992): 475-485. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 13 Nov. 2010.