AFTER READING "The Black Cat"
Write a journal as if you were the narrator's wife.
Imagine it is now the morning your husband asked you to do errands in the cellar. (You have not yet been murdered)
Describe your husband's transformation throughout your marriage.
Be sure to address: alcoholism, Pluto and his eye, the 2nd cat and his eye, what caused the fire, and the abuse. Try to explain your husband's behavior.

The Black Cat Summary

Pluto, who was his favorite, bore the brunt of his rage. One day, the narrator cut out one of the cat’s eyes, and not long after that, he hanged the cat from the branch of his tree.

After four days, the police came to thoroughly investigate his place. He felt not a twinge of guilt, only confidence that his wife’s body would never be found. He tapped gleefully on the cellar walls, boasting of their construction. However, at that tapping, a terrible wailing howl came from inside the wall. The police pulled it down and found the corpse, as well as the black cat inside, staring straight at the narrator with his one eye.

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.