The first-person point of view affects the overall story in "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe because A drunk man kills his cat and it comes back to haunt him. In Poe's usual style, the narrator of the story is the killer and we see things through his eyes. Then, he begins with the narrator's outbreak that he is shutting in the tale before his death. The theme in the story is, that self-knowledge against self-deception and sanity versus madness and love versus hate and good versus evil that the power of obsession and guilt and the sources or motives of crime, are being shown in this text.
Edgar Allan Poe ‘s use of the first person narrator is effective as it can be seen in “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” is a story narrated by an anonymous protagonist who is the killer of the story. The fact that the narrator is the killer, he tells the story from his own perspective; this leads us to question the trustworthiness of his narrative; because the first person narrative is the narrative in which the reader can be manipulated by the narrator himself.
The story is a brilliant piece of Edgar Allan Poe, which leaves the reader in suspense. Almost with every sentence of our narrator, Poe tells us that we should not trust first person narrators, especially the ones who try to convince the reader about his sincerity and stability.
