THE BLACK CAT AND OTHER STORIES THE BLACK CAT AND OTHER STORIES
Edgar Allan Poe
3
TEACHER’S BOOK
readers
THE BLACK CAT AND OTHER STORIES
1 3
Edgar Allan Poe Retold by Bill Bowler TEACHER’S BOOK
© 2016 – StandFor
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Bowler, Bill
The black cat and other stories : standfor graded readers, level 3 / Edgar Allan Poe ; retold by Bill Bowler ; illustrated Pietro Antognioni. -- 1. ed. -- São Paulo : FTD, 2016.
ISBN 978-85-96-00515-9 (aluno)
ISBN 978-85-96-00706-1 (professor)
1. Literatura infantojuvenil I. Poe, Edgar Allan. II. Antognioni, Pietro. III. Título.
16-05493
CDD-028.5
Índices para catálogo sistemático:
1. Literatura infantil 028.5
2. Literatura infantojuvenil 028.5
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Reprodução proibida: Art. 184 do Código Penal e Lei 9.610 de 19 de fevereiro de 1998.
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BEFORE READING
Look at the picture on the front of the book and read the back cover. Check the correct answers.
1. All the stories in this book are…
a. full of love and people marrying happily.
b. dark and full of crazy people and death. ü
c. about poor people’s sad lives in the 1840s.
d. about helping people when they are in trouble.
2. The man in The Black Cat story…
a. loves the pet black cat, but his wife hates it.
b. and his wife both love their pet black cat.
c. kills his pet black cat and kills his wife. ü
d. hates his wife but loves her favorite pet black cat.
3. When many people get sick with the Red Death in his country, Prince Prospero…
a. leaves them to die and has a great party with his followers. ü
b. visits the sick people and helps them to get better.
c. leaves the country for a time because he doesn’t want to get sick.
d. sends the sick people out of the country until they die or get better.
4. When Henry goes to visit his friend Roderick Usher and his sister, Madeline, he…
a. falls in love with the sister and marries her.
b. helps the sick sister to get healthy again.
c. stops the crazy sister from killing Roderick.
d. helps Roderick after his sister dies. ü
2
Each of the three stories in this book ends in a surprising way. How, do you think? Finish these sentences. Personal answers.
1. The storyteller thinks, “The black cat isn’t here any more!” but…
2. Prince Prospero has a plan to get away from the Red Death, but…
3. Roderick Usher puts his sister in a room downstairs, but…
4
1
The Black Cat
Today I need to tell you my story because tomorrow I’m going to die. For me it is a story of the darkest horror.
When I was a child, my school friends laughed at my soft heart. I loved animals, so my parents gave me different pets. I spent many happy hours with them, playing or giving them food.
I didn’t stop loving animals when I became a man. Animals are usually truer friends than people. I married young and my wife loved animals, too. She bought many nice pets for me. We had birds, goldfish, white mice, a dog – and a cat.
Our cat was large, beautiful, and black all over. He looked very wise. My wife sometimes said, laughingly, “Maybe he’s a witch’s cat.” She didn’t mean it, of course.
Pluto – that was the cat’s name – was my favorite pet. I loved playing with him. I always gave him his food, and he followed me around the house. When I went out, he followed me through the streets.
Pluto and I stayed good friends for many years. But when I started drinking, this changed me. I became more selfish, more difficult, angrier. I started using bad language and hitting my wife.
I stopped giving my pets their food and being nice to them, and started hitting them when they got in my way. I never hurt Pluto at first because he was special. But in time, that also changed.
One night I arrived home after an evening of heavy drinking. I suddenly got angry because Pluto ran away from me. I caught him with both hands and he fought and hurt my hand. I went crazy. Holding him by the neck, I took a pocket-knife from my jacket, opened it, and cut out one of the poor animal’s eyes. I am deeply ashamed now to think of it.
Late next morning I woke up. Lying in bed, I remembered taking my knife to Pluto’s eye. I felt very sorry about it. But what did I do? I got up, opened a bottle of wine, and drank without stopping for days.
During this time, the cat got better. The hole in his face looked bad. But it didn’t hurt him any more, I could see. Of course, when I got near him, he ran away. At first I felt bad about this. But soon I felt angry again.
Often we do something bad just because it is wrong. People say, “That’s not right. Don’t do it!” After this, we really want to do the bad thing. I felt that way. A voice in my head said, “You started by hurting your cat. Why not finish the job and kill it?”
So one morning I took a rope, put it around the cat’s neck and hanged it from a tree in the garden. I cried while I was doing it. I felt really sorry.
That night I woke up in bed to hear someone shouting, “Fire!” My bed was burning, and my house was on fire. My wife and I ran from the burning building. The fire burned our house and everything in it. We moved into a cheap house next to our old house that night.
Did the fire happen because I killed the cat? I don’t think so.
The day after the fire, I visited my old home. Only one wall of it was still standing. It was my old bedroom wall. It had new plaster on it and this saved it from the fire, I was sure. A lot of people were standing around this wall and looking at it. “That’s unusual!” they said. I went nearer and I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the white wall there was a picture of a big cat with a rope around its neck. It looked so real!
The Black Cat and Other Stories 8
My heart was full of horror when I first saw it. But then I thought, “Maybe when the fire began, somebody cut the dead cat down from the tree and sent it through my bedroom window to wake me. But the cat hit the wet plaster. Then, when the house fell down, this pushed the cat’s body into the plaster and it became a piece of the wall. Finally the fire burned the cat’s body until it was no longer soft. That explains the picture.”
The Black Cat
9
Although I explained the picture this way, it was still unusual. For weeks I couldn’t stop thinking about my dead cat.
During this time I began to feel sorry about losing Pluto. So when I went drinking in town, I started looking for a large black cat to be my new pet.
One evening, I found him. I was feeling sleepy after drinking too much in a cheap drinking-house on the poor side of town. There wasn’t much furniture in the room – but there was a large barrel of strong drink, with something black on top.
The Black Cat and Other Stories
I went near and touched it with my hand. It was a large cat – as big as Pluto. It looked nearly the same as Pluto but in one thing it was different. Pluto had no white hair on his body, but on the cat’s chest there was a large patch of white hair.
When I touched him, he pushed against my hand and made happy noises. “I was looking for a black cat, and here you are,” I cried.
I asked the landlord, “Can I buy your cat?” But he answered, “I don’t have a cat!”
When I showed him the cat on the barrel, he said, “I never saw that cat before.”
I played with the cat some more. When I got up to leave, it followed me into the street. I walked home, and it followed me to my front door. When I opened the door, it went inside.
My wife was happy about this. So the black cat moved in with us and soon became my wife’s favorite pet.
11
The Black Cat
After it arrived – to my surprise – I didn’t like it. It loved me, but in time, I began to hate it. I still remembered killing Pluto, and I felt ashamed of that, so I did nothing to hurt this new cat. But when it came near, I always moved out of its way.
The morning after it came to live with us, I first saw its face in the light of day. It had only one eye! I thought of Pluto. My wife loved the animal more after she saw this. She was a sweet woman with a good heart.
The Black Cat and Other Stories
12
I hated that cat more every day, but the cat loved me back more, I could see. It followed me everywhere. When I was sitting, it sat under my chair or jumped on my legs happily. When I was walking around the house, it ran between my legs and made me nearly fall to the floor. Or it ran up my pants and climbed onto my chest. When it did that, I wanted to kill it. But then I remembered hanging Pluto and that stopped me. I also had – I must tell you – a real horror of the animal.
This horror was of something unworldly. My wife first saw it. Some weeks after the cat arrived with us, she said, “Look at the patch on its chest!” I told you about this large patch of white hair. This made it different from Pluto. But slowly, over time, the patch changed. “It’s now a white gallows,” said my wife. She was right. My heart was full of horror when I saw it. “I can’t kill the animal now,” I thought.
13
The Black Cat
I looked at the gallows and thought of Pluto’s death. I couldn’t sleep after that by day or night! By day, the black cat never left me alone. By night, I woke every hour from bad dreams to find the cat sitting on my chest, on my heart.
These events changed me from half good to fully bad. I hated everything and everybody. I often shouted at my wife. She just listened and said nothing.
One day my wife came with me down into the cellar of our new house to look for something. The cat ran down the steps after us and got under my feet. I nearly fell down the steps and I became crazy. I took a heavy old ax in my hands and began to bring this down on the animal. I wanted to kill it. But my wife put her hand on my arm and stopped me.
The Black Cat and Other Stories 14
When she put her hand on my arm I became crazier. I pulled it away and brought the ax down on her head. She died at once and fell to the cellar floor without a noise. Now I needed to hide my wife’s dead body.
“I can’t take it out of the house,” I thought, “because people in the houses around us could see that.”
What could I do?
Could I cut the body into pieces and burn it? Could I make a hole in the cellar floor and put it there? Could I put it in a big box and pay someone to take it away from the house? Finally I thought of the best plan.
“I know. I can hide it inside one of the cellar walls.”
15
The Black Cat
