Things that are
believed by the characters contained in the story as a particular symbol either
the form of thoughts, visual objects, or something tangible like superstition
that in fact only believed by a handful of people could help the readers
examine how the story was being told, also has implications for the nature and
attitude of the characters themselves inside the story. The latter symbol is
found in P. G. Wodehouse’s short story entitled “Black for Luck”, a stray black
cat who is taken by Elizabeth, the main character, with its good impression
with the support of a statement told by a janitor who likes locating things
named Francis, that black cats bring good luck.
Her trust in the need
for taking the stray cat may be based on ‘the wind blowing’ as Francis said
"Black cat (s) bring luck" when Elizabeth received her manuscripts
back with editorial compliment and the acceptance of being a part of 'the game'
that she willingly requires to leave her own pet magazine which she claims as
“Accustomed to fly refuge , almost sure of a welcome” similarly the conviction
she left early statement of her distrust just by saying "I certainly
shan't object to that" to beat Francis's former statement.
This stray black cat,
as known as Joseph, with his behavior makes the host much in love with him as
pointed out as “Elizabeth adored him...” could possibly affects Elizabeth, this
Bohemian New Yorker, who lives her unprotected life and who undergoes much
straining to keep her faith in the other human nature becomes a friendly soul depending
mainly the footsteps of a kindly man who lives in the flat whose front door
faced hers. A man whom she assumes as a stealer of other people’s cats in the
afternoon when Joseph disappeared. A man whose name James Renshaw Boyd. A man
who changes Joseph into his Reginald.
The perplexing fact
comes from another Elizabeth’s inconsistency to look inside the symbolize of a black
cat which makes herself rather hypocrite here. When she knows nothing can
describes the reason why James took her cat but he is “as superstitions as a
coon” then he claims her as “a sane and practical”, she believes that Joseph,
the black cat, could help James in his first play (he is a playwright), and
despite the fact that Elizabeth does not have any friends and also regards
Joseph as just “a company”, she won’t take him back. The event implies that Elizabeth
is getting denied and refused her distrust again that she indirectly turns out
to support the power of the black cat by saying “And how do you suppose I
should feel if your play failed simply for lack of a black cat?” to James.
The combination of the
character’s conviction is apparently destroyed by their behavior of giving
reaction to each other later. An “Ah” from James when Elizabeth tells that she
has been given more responsibility as an official adviser to readers is replied
by Elizabeth who’s unsympathetically hearing that there are so many players in
James’ four-act comedy. Such ambivalence is also apparent as the narrator states, “one
moment peace ; the next chaos”, it may be considered that the presence of the
black cat is probably not so significantly affected for both of them, because
if it does, the story may be shown continually proving that have a black cat is
indeed a luck. The narrator’s narrating the story with the tendency to be more
confusing here instead of constructing hopes to the
reader to get little triumph by also believing the symbolize of the black cat
itself which is narrated in the preceding paragraphs. The confusion comes up
because of “a cold fight” that is not so clearly depicted in the story, a fight
that makes Elizabeth would neither forgive James nor forgive herself and finally
decides to avoid him although James and Joseph is the only two friends she had
in New York seems like the irony thereof. Moreover, in the case of the symbol
as if relieving himself by not physically appearing and eliminating its role in
the story.
But then the role of
Joseph in the story is displayed again when Elizabeth assumes that James had
sent a folded scrap of paper and left this in front of her door on the previous
night, as he states on that paper, “I am just off to the theatre. Won’t you
wish me luck? ............ Joseph is purring like a dynamo”. The story suggests
that the absence of Joseph can be absolutely the lure for Elizabeth to come to
the theatre accompanying James supported by the fact that they are the friends
in the city who both always feel lonely.
Moreover, after they
through all the series of the events contrary to what they might expected at the
first place that “Black cats bring luck” is deserved to be trusted, I arrive to
the climax which is appeared when James’ hope is again ‘stranded’ on the
theater as the narrator states, “James’s play was a hideous failure” then makes
Elizabeth perhaps rebuild her distrust again by saying, “Let him (the black
cat) go, the fraud". This is how the symbols can reversal those characters’
trust and distrust by probably depending what sort of luck their mean.
While in Edgar Allan
Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”, the focus symbol is the eye which is the only
reason for “I” to kill the old man. How the eye can possibly affected “I”, as
later known as also the narrator, influences through several contradictions. The
first contradiction is built up by the narrator’s first attempt to try showing
him to the readers that he is not mad but in the first sentence of this story
as he states, “True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and
am” is the way of him describing how he
probably confesses it, too.
Furthermore, the fact that “I loved the old man”
very contradictory at all with his motivation to kill the old man in every
midnights by sneaking into his room for one week. His tendency to be obsessed towards
the old man's eye that may lead him to the wrong perception between love and
hate. Then the irony arises when he assumes that the old man's eye as he
believes as the "Evil Eye" which led to him like this and that’s why
he has to literally take the eye. Moreover, the other misperception is when he
does not so well know that separated the eye from human body will immediately kill
the whole of life and the addition of the narrator to "dismembered the
corpse" by cutting off his head, arms, and legs, is probably the
development of the irony itself.
The different types of
how the symbol implicates the character comes from the attitude of Mr. Hooper
in Hawthorne's "The Minister Black Veil" which is more determinant to
face the symbolize of his black veil. Although he received any kind of scorn
from various groups in his congregation and even got an immediate protest from
his lover to take away his black veil, but Mr. Hooper will not do it until the
rest of his life. As he states to his lover, Elizabeth, “the veil is a type and
a symbol”, it may implies that he has realized it was a symbol which he must
consistently guards.
