1. Discuss the significance: There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of man.”
-Dogs are a mans best friend but the narrator is more of a cat person
2. How does the description of the cat as “sagacious” contribute to the meaning of the story?
-He was smart not to go around the man
3. What is the significance of the cat’s name, Pluto?
-He was treated badly.
4. What is the significance of the narrator’s change of disposition from docile and tender to “…more moody, more irritable and regardless of the feelings of others”?
-He loved the cat then hated it and did horrible things to it
5. Why did the narrator initially restrain himself from maltreating the cat while maltreating the other animals?
-because he felt bad
6. Why does he eventually mistreat the cat?
-he did it without thinking, and he was drunk
7. Describe the narrator’s feelings after abusing the cat. What is the significance?
-he felt guilty because he knew what he did was horrible.
8. How does the narrator define “perverseness? Do you agree with his definition? Do you agree that it is human nature?
-One of the primitive impulses of the human heart. I agree with the definition but not that it is human nature.
9. Significance: [I] hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason for offence; because I knew that in doing so I was committing a sin.”
-He felt like doing something because he knew it was bad.
10. Discuss the significance of the fire. How does the narrator explain the phenomenon he discovers after the fire? What does the phenomenon symbolize?
-He thought the cat was thrown in his house and it started the fire. He is never going to forget what he did and it will always come back and haunt him.
11. What is significant about the new cat and his markings? What does the cat symbolize?
-the new cat has a large splotch of white covering his breast. It symbolized a second chance for the man.
12. Discuss: “And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast to work out for me – whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed – a brute beast to work out for me – for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God – so much of insufferable woe!”
-He thinks he can get away with just about anything as he does more wrong.
13. Why is it significant that this cat will not leave the narrator alone?
-It is like a test to see if he will treat that cat the same, he gets mad and almost kills it as well but kills he’s wife instead.
14. How does the fact that the narrator kills his wife instead of the cat add to the meaning of the story?
-he’s a wicked man, and kills what he loves.
15. What is significant about the narrator’s method of disposing of the body?
-He walled it up in the cellar like monks did in the Middle Ages, so no one can find out about the murder
16. Discuss the significance, “I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole thing up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious.
-People make things unnoticed; in the story he was a pro at making it seem as if nothing was wrong, almost as if his wife just disappeared.
17. Why is the narrator able to sleep well after he conceals the body?
-He was a free man now, and he felt relief that his monster seemed gone forever.
18. Significance: “Once again I breathed as a free man.”
-He felt like he got his troubles out of the way and that he could go back to what he wanted to do again.
19. Why does the narrator feel triumphant when the police arrive?
-The narrator knew the police would find nothing wrong so he acted calm.
20. Discuss the syntax and punctuation in the following: “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 a 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 dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in damnation!”
-It seemed as if an awful creature was coming back and saying something bad was going to happen.
21. How do you explain the ending? Discuss the symbolism.
-Everything he did was finally getting to him, it’s like he was being haunted.
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