Characterize The Protagonist

Thesis Statement: The narrator, who originally loves animals and his wife, turns violent towards them and even kills his wife, because of alcohol addiction. Alcohol addiction as a form of illness, its consequences and examples from personal experience.

In the “The Black Cat” (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe, the protagonist and his wife love animals and have a number of them. The protagonist favorite pet was a black cat named Pluto. Because of his addiction to alcohol he ends up killing his favorite pet and his wife. The narrator, who originally loves animals and his wife, turns violent towards them and even kills his wife, because of alcohol addiction. Alcohol addiction as a form of illness, its consequences and examples from personal experience.

In the biging of the story, the narrator is a day before he dies and explains the reasons why he is in prison. Firstly he mention that he is always fond of animals and his wife also shard this love. They had a number of pets, including the cat named Pluto of which the narrator was particularly fond of. As the story goes on the narrator addiction to alcohol got worse taking the best out of him. His illness drives him to have dilutions of the cat that avoiding him while he was drunk. And later on drives him to kill his wife.

It seems to me that a clear explanation of his addiction is not given in the story. Around that time of the story alcohol was something many men got addicted to. Perhaps we could say that poverty and such issues had something to do with the problem. But still one can only assume. We could also assume that a reason as to why he became addicted to alcohol was because he hadn’t a really strong personality. According to the narrator the problem with the alcohol progressed gradually and although in the beginning he only spoke harshly to his wife, he went on to physically abuse her as well. 

That story strongly reminds me of my father and me. My personal experiences are the following. When it comes to my father it seems that he was shearing the same motive as the protagonist of the story. In the time when my father had a problem with alcohol was a time when he had financial and personal problems. At that time us family was just beginning to expand and us family business had suffered blow. Our family was counting of him to provide for everything and he couldn’t keep up. Because of that he began drinking. He had mention to me that during that period the alcohol was helped him to escape reality temporally. The result from drinking was frustration and anger; he was rude and angry towards us. Those are of the similarities I noticed between the narrator and my father.

To sum up, people with alcohol problems usually are having problems in their lives and they are trying to escape from them in order fell good or not to feel anything at all. Alcohol leads to many consequences physical and social ones as well. Perhaps the people that end up having such addictions already suffer from health, social and other problems, but in my opinion it usually happens to weaker characters. People with strong personalities tend to have a better control over their lives, and even though both the narrator could have been a strong character, just like my father he could be going through a rough phase in his life.