I've got a paper due on Wednesday over two of Edgar Allen Poe's stories. One is "The Black Cat". I've got everything down except one part. I was wondering what exactly interferes with the main character getting away with murder at the end? I've been having a horrible time trying to figure that out.
Thanks for asking this question. I enjoyed rereading a summary of this story. The cat had crept into the wall niche with the narrator's dead wife. Of course he had rebricked and sealed the wall, not realizing that the cat was in the wall with the corpse. The narrator, in bragging about the soundness of the wall, knocked on it. The cat heard it and begain wailing -- alerting the police that it was in there.
So -- two things convicted the narrator -- his own remorseless pride in concealing the murder, and the cat.
http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/blackcat/#summary