Poe and Rihanna: a tale of alcoholism

Edgar Allen Poe is literature’s best-known insane alcoholic. The previous statement is a small exaggeration, but it is known that Poe struggled with alcohol abuse. In his short story “The Black Cat,” the main character writes from his jail cell about the effects of alcoholism on his behavior, and the effects are  gruesome. The unnamed main character has violent episodes in which he ends up killing his favorite pet cat and his caring wife. Rihanna’s “Disturbia” describes a similar experience

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that she names appropriately as “Disturbia”. Rihanna does not kill anyone in her story, but her disease does affect her and others around her negatively in similar ways that alcoholism affects the narrator in “The Black Cat.” Poe’s “The Black Cat,” and Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” are closely related to each other: they both refer to alcohol abuse and they describe the negative impact of their abuse on their minds.

Poe’s story states outright that alcohol is the stem of the plot of his story. On page the second page of his story, the narrator of the story admits the beginning of the abuse towards his animals. He writes “But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like Alchohol![...]."

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The narrator openly admits the source of his abuse as his addiction to alcohol. Rihanna’s song does not describe her disease so easily but, it’s definitely implied when she sings “[...] To come and grab you. It can creep up inside
you and consume you. A disease of the mind it can control you” (Genius.com). The first part of this lyric describes how difficult is can be to see the difference between healthy alcohol use and being addicted to alcohol which prevents people from taking measures to avoid addiction. This lets addiction take over without the victim being aware until it becomes dangerous.  The second part of this lyric refers to the fact that addiction is a disease that changes your brain structure and chemistry, and therefore alters your behavior. Now that the main theme in these works have been determined as alcohol abuse, we can discuss what the effects of their addiction are.