![]() ![]() The narrator begins to hate the second cat and "came to look upon it with inutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious, as from the breath of a pestilence." This simile makes the reader aware of just how much the narrator hates the cat and how much it plagues him. The consequences of his alcoholism contribute to the blackness of his guilty conscience, and his refusal to take responsibility explains his desire to transfer that responsibility to a cat. Alcoholism is described in metaphorical terms as “Fiend Intemperance,” which is a “disease which grew up on me,” ultimately transforming into a “fury of a demon” capable of possessing him. On several instances, the narrator engages metaphor to distance himself from his culpability in consuming an excess of alcohol and the violence he knows will ensue. The full extent of how deeply the guilty conscience of the narrator has been invested in the cat is exhibited in one of the most effective similes in the story when the animal is heard making “a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman.” The movement of the cat in narrator’s mind from something to be pitied with its muffled yelp to the dreadful shrieking of something unnatural is swift. ![]() The concluding image of the story can be seen to confirm that the black cat is a metaphorical feline even to the narrator: “I had walled the monster up within the tomb!” The black cat of a guilty conscience is revealed here with two metaphors: not only has the cat become fully endowed with symbolic value as a hideous abomination, but also the wall of the narrator's home-a place for safety and living-has become a tomb, a "home" for the dead. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.Buy Study Guide Metaphor: The Monster in the Wall The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. These walls-are you going, gentlemen?-these walls are solidly put together " and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily with a cane which I held in my hand upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.īut may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the arch-fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!-by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman-a howl-a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation. By the by, gentlemen, this-this is a very well-constructed house." "I may say an excellently well-constructed house. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. "Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your suspicions. ![]() And to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
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