In his story "The Black Cat," Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes his experience with madness, and challenges the readers suspension of disbelief by using imagery in describing the plot and characters. Poe uses foreshadowing to describe the scenes of sanity versus insanity. He writes "for the most wild yet homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor illicit belief. Yet mad I am not- and surely do I not dream," alerts the …showed first 75 words of 1208 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1208 total…believed he was free from the evil of madness. Poe ends the story after utilizing every inch of suspension of disbelief the reader can afford. He sums up the plot of the story when he writes "the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman," (85) implying that the cat had induced the same torture on him that he had brought on the first cat.