The Best of Edgar A. Poe
Name _______________________________________________________ Date ________________________
The Black Cat
1. In the first few paragraphs, the narrator gives us some background information about himself. What does he most stress?
2. Who was Pluto?
3. Describe the relationship between Pluto and the narrator.
4. What was the first violent act the narrator did to Pluto?
5. What second act (the narrator describes as being done in the spirit of perverseness) did he commit on Pluto?
6. On the night the narrator killed Pluto, what happened to his home?
7. Describe the second cat.
8. Describe the relationship between the second cat and the narrator.
9. What peculiar mark did the cat have?
10. Why did the narrator kill his wife?
11. How did he dispose of the body?
12. Who came on the fourth day after the murder?
13. What was the narrator's reaction to the police?
14. How did the police discover the body?
15. Where is the climax of the story?
16. Which is more important to Poe's purpose: the murders or the revealing of the narrator's mental state?
17. Why is the setting of the story vague?
18. What value does using the first person narrative add to the story?
19. "Have we not a perpetual inclination . . . to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?" Answer Poe's rhetorical question.
Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues
Read the sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the underlined words mean on the lines provided.
1. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.
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2. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
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3-4. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness.
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5. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.
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6. When I first beheld this apparition--for I could scarcely regard it as less--my wonder and my terror were extreme.
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7. ...I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
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8. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which would be difficult to make the reader comprehend.
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9. ...the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates...
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10. Upon its head,...sat the hideous beast whose craft had...whose voice had consigned me to the hangman.
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Part II. Determining the Meaning -- Match the vocabulary words to their definitions
___ 1. intemperate A. Can't be turned back
___ 2. malevolence B. Quality of being directed away from what is right or good.
___ 3. irrevocable C. Not moderate
___ 4. perverseness D. A ghostly figure
___ 5. atrocity E. Handed over
___ 6. apparition F. Ill will toward others; rancor; malice; evil influence, especially supernatural
___ 7. odious G. An appalling or atrocious action, situation, or object
___ 8. pertinacity H. Gave in
___ 9. succumbed I. Evoking feelings or repulsion
___ 10. consigned J. Persistence; tenacity; without quitting