Gothic tales are dominated by fear and terror and explores the themes of death and decay. The Gothic crosses boundaries into the realm of the unknown, arousing extremes of emotion with settings evoking a gloomy, morbid atmosphere while focusing on doom, destiny and fate. It deals with the dark, the sinister and the supernatural, often has symbolic characters such as the helpless female and associates common images and themes. Edgar Allen Poe was an English short-story writer whose work reflected the traditional Gothic conventions of the time. In Poe's short-story The Black Cat the reader is drawn into a story centred around madness, crime and murder. Poe has chosen his genre excellently as through the Gothic conventions he can successfully established his purpose. His themes of alcoholism, cruelty to animals, superstitious beliefs, perverseness and madness, sanity and denial...