摘　要

埃德加•爱伦•坡是一名伟大的十九世纪美国小说家、诗人和文学评论家，他的作品对世人来说具有”独一无二”的风格。其作品语言和形式精致，内容多样。
随着西方20世纪现代主义文学的崛起，人们发现爱伦•坡笔下的怪诞颓废的病态现象已经构成了现代主义作品中的一大景观。运用非理性主义的诊断法，透视出被荒谬现实扭曲的人格,这正是现代主义作家描述”现代人”精神病综合症的病灶。将其作品置于现代主义的范畴下加以分析显得尤为必要。
《黑猫》是爱伦坡恐怖小说中的著作之一，本文将对其中主人公以及其妻子的性格进行研究探讨，通过比较以往的人物性格研究和相似案例，得出相关结论。并从文化，语境以及修辞效果等方面研究作者塑造该人物的意图以及文章宗旨，并将人物性格与现今社会中相似人群进行对照，提出一些建议和想法，从而帮助读者更好地理解该小说，更重要的是揭露现今一些社会问题并加以重视。

关键词：与现代人的对比；人物性格分析；象征意义

Abstract

As an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, Edgar Allan Poe owns famous works with unique style which are popular in both past and modern time. The language and form of his works are delicate and graceful. Contents are varied. He attempted to set some effect in his works.
In 20th century, with the rise of modern socialist literature in western, people were amazed to find that weird decadent morbidity phenomenon that written by Poe became things worth paying attention to in modernism works. The use of irrationalism diagnosis method helps people to see through the personality that is distorted by the absurd reality. It is what modernism writers describe “modern people’s mental syndrome lesion”. It is significant to analyze his works in the area of modernism.
“The Black Cat” is one of the most famous horror short stories written by Allan Poe. In the paper, the characters of the protagonist and his wife will be analyzed. This paper will be created by studying the author’s intention of creating the protagonist and the main idea of the tale from the culture, context and rhetorical effect; and put forward suggestions and ideas by comparing the protagonist with modern people. With many similar cases, it will help readers understand this novel better and reveal some social problems which should be paid attention to.

Key words: comparison with moderns; characteristics analysis; meanings of symbols

1 Introduction
This paper is about the analysis of the characters in one of the famous short tales--- ---”The Black Cat”. It will be created by studying the author’s intention of creating the protagonist and the main idea of the tale from the culture, context and rhetorical effect; and put forward suggestions and ideas by comparing the protagonist with modern people. With many similar violent cases referred, it will help readers understand this novel better and reveal some social problems which should be paid attention to and stopped to happen again in our daily life.