Edgar Allen Poe

I decided to choose "The Black Cat". A short summary of this short story is a narrator was once a good person and an animal lover, and he married a wife of a similar disposition, but he has turned to drink and begun to abuse his wife, his pets, and particularly his cat named Pluto. He finally hangs the cat, which coincides with the burning down of his house and the resulting loss of his property, but after some months he adopts a similar cat, which differs from Pluto only in the patch of fur on its chest. He comes to hate the cat, and when he finally attacks it, his wife gets in the way, and he kills her instead, hiding the body behind a wall. However, he accidentally walls up to the cat as well, when the police come to investigate, the cat cries out and reveals the corpse's hiding place. One thing I notice with a lot of Poe's short stories is the fact we never really have a clear view of who the narrator is. In many of his short stories, the narrator is unnamed. I really enjoy this about Poe's short stories because it keeps his "dark" and "mysterious" style to his writings. 

I never experienced Poe before college, I first read him in my Intro to Literature class and I fell in love with gothic literature after that. I would definitely consider teaching Poe to a high school class, I think teaching him would give their curriculum a bit of variety. I think gothic literature makes you question a lot and the mystery aspect raises more thoughts and questions. For example, I am constantly questioning who the narrator of some of his stories are.