essay draft

Melanie Alvarado

Midterm Essay, English 2001

Oct 19, 2020

Reading “the black cat” and “a rose for Emily” we discover that they are two Gothic stories that have much in common. First, we will talk about what the stories are about to better understand the plot. After knowing the stories, we are going to explore two characters that have a lot in common and how the Gothic elements help their development.

              “The black cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is about a man who loved animals, he married a woman who loved them too. They have many animals roaming around it, they were both thrilled and very in love with their animals. Throughout history, the man gave himself up to drink and while doing that he neglected the animals, he also yelled at his wife, but he never mistreated the cat, the man still loved his cat. But after a while the black cat receives the same consequences as the other animals and the man’s wife. Another day the man returned home drunk and hatred ran through his body when he saw the cat who looked at him with fear. So, he grabbed a rope and the cat, to hang it on the branch of a tree in a house where he hanged it. They moved, but in their new neighborhood, there was a one-eyed cat with a white spot around its neck. With fear running through his blood, he grabs the ax to kill the cat. His wife, in defense of the creature, claims him, telling him not to kill this new animal; The man, as he saw that she would not let him out, killed her. The police arrived, and in search of the wife’s body, they broke down the wall. In which there was a black cat with fire coming out of one eye and a white spot that surrounded its neck, on the corpse of the wife. 

“A rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is about a woman called Emily who loses her dad and start to have strange behavior. People in the neighborhood found out she was going to get married. However, she did not get to marry since Homer her fiancé disappeared. From that moment coming and going. A very strong smell was felt, and the neighbors complained about the smell, but one day that smell disappears. At 74 she dies at home, and the neighbors go to her funeral and discover a room that no one had entered there forty years ago. When they entered the room, they found some men’s objects on the dresser and a suit. On the bed lay a man, and next to it was a pillow that had the marking of a head and gray hair.

Both stories have two characters in common, the unnamed narrator who tells the story in “the black cat” and Emily from “a rose for Emily.” These two characters are similar. In both stories, we can see the “spirit of perverseness” is was makes people do things they know will be bad for themselves and others. “Spirit of perverseness” is used to explain and show why they both behave like this. In “The black cat” the narrator shows that has a violent and aggressive emotional behavior and that he does not feel any remorse or guilt for his actions when he kills the cat he feel nothing and he knew that he doing something wrong but he kills it anyway. In “A rose for Emily” she buys the poison knowing it is dangerous and with the idea of killing her fiancé, she knew she was doing wrong, but she did it anyway so he would never leave her. This shows how the spirit of perverseness works in both stories. We can also see in both stories many gothic elements like the black cat and the Emily’s house to represent the death. The strand of hair like reminder of love and the perverse thing that a person could do to find the happiness.