"The Black Cat" is a story which reveals the gradual heightening of guilt that stems from one's actions and its effect on the human psyche. At the beginning of the book, the narrator relates the story of his descent into evildoing for the sake of evil. Seemingly without reason, other than the belief that the cat has been avoiding his fits of rage, he first gouges out the cat's eye and then proceeds to hang the cat from a tree in his yard. After that, he begins seeing strange apparitions everywhere, which remind him of the cat. First, he sees an impression of the cat hanging on the one remaining wall of his house after it burns to the ground. Then, he sees a black cat perched upon a barrel of alcohol. The cat seems to be haunting him, but it is demonstrative of the feeling that one has after one has committed an evil deed; it is difficult, if not impossible, to completely escape the fear that something will happen to the person who has committed the evil deed. He takes the new cat home and eventually discovers that the white spot on the cat has taken on the shape of the gallows, a place where one is hung. Eventually, his anger gets to be so great that he kills his wife, and his guilt becomes so great that he ends up giving himself away to the police when they come to search his house. Throughout the story, Poe combines the supernatural with the rational and logical, and the lines become somewhat blurred. When one is plagued with guilt, one has a difficult time believing that certain occurrences are just coincidences and not, in fact, divine punishment.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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