Yunhong Li
FIQWS 10008 &10108
Prof. Yankwitt & Prof. Von Uhl
11/25/2019
The True Self Behind Trauma and Pressure
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Carmen Maria Machado’s “Eight Bites”, the two unnamed narrators can represent anyone. The authors don’t use a name in order to avoid limiting the audience’s imagination. The two unnamed narrators imply that a person is often influenced by those people around him or her in society. The narrators unconsciously care about what other people think and do about them, and this is reflected and proved in their actions, words, and thoughts. The two unnamed narrators both experienced some traumas in their lives from their family members and social groups. Their experiences are similar to most people in today’s society. In “The Black Cat” and “Eight Bites”, the Freudian concepts of displacement and condensation center on the two anonymous narrators’ individual desires to belong in society and highlight their perceptions of the traumas and pressures the two anonymous narrators experience from the people around them as their societies shape their sense of self.
One example of the pressure and trauma unnamed narrator suffers is from “The Black Cat”; In this story, when the unnamed narrator was a child, other kids made fun of him, because he was so gentle and kind (Poe 3). The anonymous narrator reacts to the pressure of the kids’ ridicule by becoming more reclusive and antisocial and doesn’t associate with his peers. On the contrary, he is willing to spend a lot of time with animals and gets pleasure from taking care of animals (Poe 3). His long association with animals keeps him away from people. But he ignores the situation and has withdrawn from social life. Until the narrator becomes an adult, it’s increasingly clear to him how vulnerable the relationship is between people. As the narrator says, “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 mere Man” (Poe 4). These words reveal the narrator is disappointed in interpersonal relationships. He thinks only the animals can give their love to him unselfishly and be loyal to him and never betray him, while human beings cannot do this. This formation of his sense of self is closely related to the ridicule from his childhood. As Sean J. Kelly, who is associate professor of English at Wilkes University, claims in his article “ ‘I Blush, I Burn, I Shudder, While I pen the Damnable Atrocity’: Penning Perversion in Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’ ”, “the narrator describes his early experiences of intense emotional pleasure with his domesticated animals within the context of social alienation from his peers… presents the narrator’s emotional life as one of solitary pleasures” (87). He agrees with the narrator’s description of his childhood with his pets as this relates to his separation from his peers’ matters. That illustrates the narrator’s “social alienation from his peers” makes him become lonely and see animals as his emotional sustenance. This social alienation is the trauma the narrator suffers and contributes him build his sense of self.
Furthermore, the anonymous narrator displaces the trauma and pressure he has experienced in childhood to his cats and his wife, which shows his sense of self becomes stronger. As the narrator grows up, the alcohol awakens those childhood experiences in the narrator’s unconscious mind and causes his personality shift. Every time the narrator gets drunk, he tortures his pets and even beats and scolds his wife. His behavior is a displacement, which is a shift of negative emotions, transferring negative emotions to a less threatening person or object (Freud 2218). That explains in his childhood, he was angry with other kids who had made fun of him, but he didn’t show his anger and discomfort at the time. But now the narrator is an adult, he can’t go back to his childhood and vent his anger on those kids. Therefore, he shifts his anger on his pets and wife. As Freud says “what an unsuspectedly great part is played in human development by impressions and experiences of early childhood” (Freud 2223). That proves the childhood experience is the cause of his evil deeds. As his behavior grows worse, his favorite cat, Pluto fears him and eludes him, which makes him sad and even angrier, and leads he hangs Pluto (Poe 6). After that, he realizes he commits a crime. He regrets killing Pluto and finds a black cat that looks like dead Pluto (Poe 8). This black cat always reminds him of the crime he has committed. It makes him feels pain and fear, then a variety of negative emotions let him kill the cat and his wife under impulse. Which means the experience of killing the cat already left him with a trauma. The black cat is a condensation phenomenon. In Freud’s view, “between the elements in the manifest dream and collect the ideas that occur to you in connection with each separate element of the dream by free association” (Freud 2222). This helps to clarify the black cat symbolizes the anonymous narrator’s guilt, regret, and conscience. The narrator knows his crime is too cruel to be forgiven. But he doesn’t feel conscientiously vexed. He just regrets losing pluto. These anonymous’s thoughts and actions fully reflect his sense of self. Just like what Kelly states in his article, “Poe’s tale, which hints at the potentially antisocial aspects of the narrator’s affection for animals, suggests that excessive sensibility may be the cause of sadomasochistic violence rather than its remedy” (87). The unnamed narrator’s antisocial personality contributes him abuses his pets, and his excessive love for his pets has amplified and turns into hurt and killing. The trauma and pressure the unnamed narrator received from his childhood that eventually leads to the tragedy of him to kill the cats and his wife.
Poe, who is the author of “The Black Cat” uses the first-person point of view, telling the story from the perspective of the unnamed narrator. His purpose is using “I” to bring the reader closer to the story because the narrator can directly tell his story to the reader. The narrator is anonymous, that means he can represent everyone. In today’s society, there may be some people facing the same problem as the protagonist. They are divorced from the masses and becomes reclusive and antisocial. That can be traumatic for them. Therefore, Poe’s protagonist not only leads the readers learn about his sense of self, but also reflects these people’s sense of self.
Similarly to Poe’s the unnamed narrator, the anonymous narrator of “Eight Bites” also faces the pressure and suffers the trauma from the people around her. But the difference is the anonymous narrator always tries to fit into the crowd. In “Eight Bites”, the anonymous narrator represses her true self, imposes the aesthetic standards of her mother and sisters on herself, which builds her sense of self of wanting to be slim. That also creates pressure to her virtually. In addition, when the anonymous narrator was a teenager, she was not fat. But when she looks at the photo of the young self, she thinks “the teenager in those photos is very beautiful, in a wistful kind of way” (Machado). That makes her feels bad about her body image and causes her trauma. Under the pressure and trauma, the narrator wants to be slim, even more. At first, she has a strict diet, following her mother’s idea of eight bites. The narrator’s mother always said, “eight bites are all you need, to get the sense of what you are eating” (Machado). This idea symbolizes the unnamed narrator’s belief. She believes her mother is right and says “I could not make eight bites work for my body and so I would make my body work for eight bites” (Machado). That reveals eating less, for the narrator, is self-restraint. She tries to trains her body to gets used to eating only eight bites of food. However, dieting doesn’t work. So when she sees her sisters suddenly become thin, she wants to do the same surgery that her sisters had undergone to become slim. Whether it’s eight bites or surgery, they all are the ways to help the narrator get thinner. In Freud’s lens, this is a kind of condensation, which is more than one idea into one symbol (Freud 2222). For the anonymous narrator, eight bites and surgery symbolize becoming slim. She is always dissatisfied with herself, and her idea of wanting to be slender also becomes more and more intense. Nevertheless, the narrator’s daughter doesn’t want the narrator to do the surgery and accuses her of being dissatisfied with herself (Machado). That leads the narrator to displaces her dissatisfaction and anger with her body image to her daughter, blames and distances her daughter for not understanding her. That demonstrates the Freudian concept of displacement. Thus it can be seen the narrator lacks security, that is why she tries to pander to the masses. She hides her antisocial side which is she thinks she is not fat and follows the beauty standard to do the surgery to become slim. According to the article “Cosmetic Surgery Attitudes Among Midlife Women: Appearance Esteem, Weight Esteem, and Fear of Negative Appearance Evaluation”, Dunaev and other two authors claim, western societies sexually objectify women’s bodies, leading women to feel their value is based on their appearance (60). This is one of the reasons that the anonymous narrator values her body image so much. In addition, the authors state middle-aged women face the pressures of aging and age “may translate into heightened appearance concerns, increased fear of negative appearance judgments, greater body dissatisfaction” (Dunaev, Schulz and Markey 60). The protagonist of “Eight Bites” also is a middle-aged woman. She looks at her young daughter and knows she is no longer young. The pressure of age makes her pays more attention to her figure. Her sense of self shows she longs for belong and attention. The pressure and trauma she received from her mother, sisters, daughter, as well as society lead to her strong desire to be slim.
The protagonist of “Eight Bites” is anonymous, which is similar to the protagonist of “The Black Cat”. Comparing to the purpose of Poe, the author of “The Black Cat”, Machado, uses the anonymous narrator to reflect the pressure and trauma that most women face and suffer in today’s society. The society defines women’s slender figure as the beauty standard. Slim women will be treated friendly, even enjoy the priority and superiority. But fat women will be treated differently, be discriminated against. That prompts many women to want to do cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance. Women live under such pressure that leads their sense of self are shaped by their desire for belonging.
The anonymous narrators of “The Black Cat” and “Eights Bites” both suffer pressure and trauma from the people around them, these experiences shape the two anonymous narrator’s sense of self, and their individual desires also are clarified by the Freudian concept of displacement and condensation. For “The Black Cat”, the unnamed narrator’s childhood experience causes the trauma to him, and he is under pressure to socialize. That builds his sense of self, and leads him to release his anger and discomfort to his cats and wife, induces he commits the crime of killing. In “Eight Bites”, the unnamed narrator receives the pressure and trauma from her family, which causes her wants to be slim by having the surgery in her sense of self. The two anonymous’s actions, words, and thoughts completely show their sense of self. In general, everyone is affected by the people and things around them. These social influences form pressure and trauma and shape everyone’s sense of self. But the true self can only be found behind trauma and pressure.
Work Cited
Dunaev, Jamie. Schulz, Jessica L., and Markey, Charlotte N “Cosmetic Surgery Attitudes Among
Midlife Women: Appearance Esteem, Weight Esteem, and Fear of Negative Appearance Evaluation.” Sage Journals, Research Article, April 25, 2016.
Freud, Sigmund. Sigmund Freud: Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Penguin, 1995.
Kelly, Sean J. “I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity”: Penning Perversion
in Poe’s “The Black Cat.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 13, no. 2, Fall 2012, pp.
Machado, Carmen Maria. “Eight Bites.” Gulf Coast Magazine, Summer/Fall 2017
http://gulfcoastmag.org/journal/29.2-summer/fall-2017/eight-bites/
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Black Cat.” PDF ebook. José Menéndez. Elegant Ebooks. 1843
