Salim’s Coffeehouse Post #4

In literature there are many components that make up a story and they become key components throughout. Two main components of this kind of literature called gothic literature is The spirit of perverseness and Central Gothic Irony(CGI).They two components are what help portray the stories image through characters actions and surrounding. To be more specific two stories held these components to high regard throughout its whole plot and these two were the “Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe and the “Strange Cases of Dr.jekyll and Mr.Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson. The way the characters of those stories were portrayed showed a very similar mental state through out change towards the end they were similar in a lot of aspects and in the “Strange Cases of Dr.jekyll and Mr.Hyde” the two main characters showed their sides of view and the way the viewed their actions and feelings and the same occurred in the ‘Black Cat” for the narrator. The spirit of perverseness which is when a character does something bad or continues to do something bad even if they know it is harmful for others,themselves or both them and others. Then it was the Central Gothic Irony which is when the character tries to come back to a state of normalcy after they have gone through and been a source of chaos in a way. So what makes them Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde so similar to the narrator of the “Black Cat”?
In the “Strange Cases of Dr.jekyll and Mr.Hyde” Dr.jekyll and Mr.Hyde are the same person. The story is about the struggle between Jekyll and his other side Hyde which was caused by a potion Jekyll made to see the other side of people, the dark and

bad side, not the side made to compromise to society’s norms. At first it was him in control and he got younger when he tuned to Hyde andhe was doing little mischievous stuff he always wanted to do but no one could say nothing because they don’t know him,but later he lost control and Hyde got his own consciousness some way and caused an accident and killed Sir Devers Carew. When he came to Jekyll couldn’t stop him anymore because Hyde started to come out anytime without Jekyll’s permission and even came out when Jekyll went to sleep and continued his violence. Even though Jekyll knew what was happening he still took that potion it made him feel good and that when his addiction was shown and he saw only two options to regain control or to commit suicide and he chose the latter suicide,.His guilt came to him and he died and left a letter explaining everything about him and Hyde as a way to redeem himself and even left his close friend Mr.Utterson his will.Through that you can see the aspect of the spirit perverseness and the (CGI) from Jekyll and the cause Hyde.
In the ‘Black Cat” the story is about the narrator and his rising violent tendencies because of his drinking problem which leads to delusions. In the beginning he and his wife were people who loved animals. It was their nature but later the narrator changed. The drinking that caused him to fall into his delusion,all of his delusions were all put onto his black cat pluto. Even though he saw what was causing him to go crazy, which was the drinking he never stopped always went back to or at the end of the day. His anger towards the cat grew which led to abuse and then even led to him killing the cat. Later on he starts to come to a realization of his actions and gets a new cat because it reminded him of Pluto but because he reminded him of pluto when it was home he started to abuse it more and led to him trying to kill it but instead killing his wife who tried to protect the cat. In the end he looked back at his action which caused him to see his wrongs.