So i thought my reader response kicked butt so i'm going to share it with all of you. of course i didn't re-read it so if you see any mistakes feel free to tell me ^^
Advanced Reader Response
The story I read by Edgar Allen Poe was “The Black Cat”. In this story there is a man who, in the beginning, is very kind and tender. He loves animals and when he grows up and is married has many pets. His favorite pet is an all black cat named Pluto. But as times goes on he becomes an alcoholic and when intoxicated, which is often, he abuses his animals and his wife. One night he comes home very drunk and wants to be in the company of Pluto, but the cat, knowing the man’s violent tendencies, tries to avoid him. The man doesn’t like this so he grabs up the cat. This, in turn, scares the cat into biting him. Angered by this the man takes out a pocket knife and cuts out one of the cats eyes. Later he regrets it, sort of. He is bothered by the animal who used to love him, but now is terrified by him, so one day he hangs Pluto from a tree in his court yard. Later, in the night, the man’s house catches on fire. His wife, their servant, and himself are all able to escape. When he goes to see the damage that’s been done there is a bunch of people gathered around the only remaining wall of the house. On the wall of the house, burned into it by the smoke, is what appears to be the image of a large cat with a noose around it’s neck. This scares him somewhat, and soon he becomes even more of an alcoholic. He longs for another cat like Pluto, so at the bars he frequents, he keeps an eye out for another cat like him. One day he is at a particularly seedy bar when he spots a cat almost exactly like Pluto, except it has a white patch on its chest. He gets it to come home with him, but is dismayed to find out the next morning that the cat also has a missing eye, just like Pluto. The man comes to loath this cat who tries to follow him around everywhere. What makes him particularly hate the cat is that the white patch comes to look like the gallows. One day he and his wife have to go down to the basement of the building they live in, and the cat follows them. The cat nearly trips the man down the stairs, causing him to be filled with an uncontrollable rage. He grabs an ax and attempts to kill the cat. His wife stops him by grabbing his arm. Unfortunately, with him in such a state, resulted in him killing her instead. Not too troubled by what he just did, the man goes on to think about how to get rid of the body unnoticeably. He ends up hiding her in the wall of the basement. He tries to find the cat when he is done, so he can finally kill it, but he is unable to find it. Days pass and there are searches of his home for his wife. On what seems to be the last search of his house by the police they go into the basement, the man gets to cocky and tells them that this is a very well made house and such and knocks on the very spot his wife is buried behind, and when he does this a hideous howl comes from the other side. The police quickly take down the wall, and there on the other side is the cat sitting on the head of his now very decomposed wife. A quote I believe really describes this story is “And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness.” (“The Black Cat”10). I think that this quote describes the story very well because most of it is about the man doing perverse things. Also perverse means deliberately doing something wrong merely because it is wrong.
While there are not any references to the man’s physical appearance there are a couple about his mental state. In the beginning of the story the man is described as “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition.” (“The Black Cat”8). Later in the story the man’s disposition changes because of him becoming an alcoholic, “I grew day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.” (“The Black Cat”9). As you can see the man goes from sane in the beginning of the story to insane by the end of this short story. The main character, who is not named, goes from a very docile animal lover to a wife beater and an animal abuser. The reason for him being like that is because he is an alcoholic and when intoxicated, which is pretty often, he becomes very abusive. As to why he became an alcoholic is unknown. Though it took several years for him to go from his two personalities it feels as if it happens quite rapidly because the story jumps from one personality to the other in only a matter of sentences. Though alcohol is his main motivator for his actions, while intoxicated, and sometimes sober, he finds other motivators for his actions. Such as the murder of his cat, he is motivated to do this because he can not stand how this animal who offered him so much love was now afraid of him. Though this, arguably, could have been cause by the alcohol as well, since his cat was afraid of him due to his violet actions because of his alcoholism. Though the action of killing his wife could be motivated by the presence of the cat, it was once again the addiction to drinking that was the main motivator. But of course one could argue that even alcohol wasn’t the motivation at all. That it was, in fact, something else, for it was something else that had made him want the in alcohol in the first place. And whatever that “something else” is, is the main motivator of all his wrong actions. Unfortunately we never find out what that is during the story.
If I were to make a movie version of “The Black Cat” there would be many I would do. First off my cast would consist of Johnny Depp as the man, Laura Michelle Kelly as the wife, Leonard Nimoy as the narrator, and some well train acting cat as Pluto and another one for the other cat. I choose Depp as the actor to play the man because his performance in “The Secret Window” sort of reminds me of this story. In “The Secret Window” he played a writer who was slowly going mad, he even goes from loving his dog to killing it with a screwdriver. How he changes through the movie reminds me of how the man changes through out the story, from a kind man who like animals to a abusive animal killer, and he performed in the movie very well. In my opinion I think Depp is a great actor and is great at playing twisted characters, such as in “The Secret Window”, “Sweeny Todd”, and “Once Apon a Time In Mexico”. I don’t have much of a reason for casting Kelly as the wife, only that she played Depp’s wife in “Sweeny Todd” and she resembled the image I had of what the man’s wife should look like. Though she wasn’t in the movie a lot and I haven’t seen the other things she’s been in, from what I can tell she is a good actress. As for my reason of choosing Nimoy as the narrator is just because Spock is my favorite character on “Star Trek”, and because he plays the voice of the the King in the movie “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and I thought he had a good voice in that movie. The well trained cat actors are just a given. There aren’t too many things I want to take out of the movie. I hate it when the movie isn’t exactly like the book (even for good reasons) so I would try to remove as little as I could. One of the things that I will probably have to take out is how the man takes several years to go from sane to insane, I will just have it start from him already being an alcoholic and use the narrator to tell of the person he used to be. As for any scenes I definitely won’t add any! More than I hate taking scenes from a movie about a book is adding new ones in. It completely ruins the book if you put new things in. Changing scenes or taking a few out isn’t too bad, because usually it’s necessary to do so to put the book in movie form, but adding scenes is completely unnecessary. I mean why would you add scenes if you were going to cut some out? Why not just leave them in? Obviously if you are making a movie about a book the book was very popular just the way it was, with out any little added scenes. To quote Spock, adding scenes is “Completely illogical.”
