Edgar Allan Poe and
Joyce Carol Oates

Tales x 2

Joyce Carol Oates has often taken inspiration from other authors—Joyce, Chekhov, Kafka, James—to create highly compelling and original short stories based on classic ones. Her story “The White Cat” has its source in Poe’s tale of domestic terror, “The Black Cat,” a first-person confession by a husband on the eve of his execution for the murder of his wife. Oates turns the approach around, imagining a wife who, in an ironic turn of fate, survives the intentions of a jealous and destructive husband. Central to each story is a beloved/despised cat who embodies and suffers the projected emotional complexities of husband and wife.