A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell

Fear is an ancient emotion that has existed as long as life has inhabited the earth, from the smallest critter to the mightiest of predators, even us humans supposedly the most advanced beings that has ever seen the light of dawn can’t deny this feeling, it is a stressful feeling that can strip you of your sense of reason and common sense In this poem we are introduced to another feeling, one that most people would arguably agree only is a human feeling, guilt, the feeling that specifically makes you feel awful about a former action, one that might have had another possible outcome.
Vernon Scannell deals with these feelings in his poem: A Case of Murder, in which we follow a young child at the age of 9 that is left home alone. His only company down in the basement is the family cat, a gold eyed black cat. The cat continuously irritates him by the buzzing sound that cats make when purring, he has always hated that sound. So he goes on to hit the cat with a stick, the cat hides away and hisses at him, the child joys in the cats pain, and decides to poke it. As a result that cat runs for the door in order escape this sadistic kid, unfortunately the child literally cuts off the cats escape by smashing the door into the feline, killing it. Frighten by his own excessive use of force against this cat makes him realize what just happened, he decides to hide the lifeless furry body within a cupboard. As time goes by he is beginning to hear strange sounds, catlike purring coming from the cardboard. Throughout the whole text, the cat is surrounded with some sort of evil presence, in a way Vernon Scannell makes us feel that the cat is somehow possessed by a demon of some sort, especially when he describes it; you really get the feeling that the cat is watching you. The same goes for the child, when he describes the evil grin: “He followed the grin on his new-made face” that the child has after striking the cat with the stick. It can be theorized that he is in a strange frenzy mode, especially as he delights in the cats’ pain. The atmosphere of the dark and damp basement only contributes to this theory.
When you read through the poem you notice that the mood of the text is very shifting, but has an overall growing darkness to it. One moment he is lusting for blood: “a wide-eyed frightened snarl of a grin” and the next he is a little crying boy with no trace of the wild barbaric sadism: “And he bit his knuckles and cried and cried”. Vernon gives a very detailed description of the cat in the beginning; we get a complete image of this cat, from the gold eyes to the sounds that it emits when it is purring. It is completely opposite when we are reading about the child, we are left to wonder what this child looks like, since there are no descriptions. One may think that Vernon did this for the individual person to decide how this seemingly diabolical child looks like, in order for people to interpret the poem differently.
One cannot miss the last lines, in which we see that he is in fact just a child, this is shown when he is terrified of his own actions and starts to break down and begins to weep. After the hiding of the dead body, he begins to hear the cat purring, and it is clear that Vernon is trying to tell us that the child feels guilt. This is especially true with the way that he describes the purring as getting louder everyday as imagery of a growing feeling of guilt towards the brutal murder.
There are some things that are left unanswered such as, why he is stuck in the basement, was it a punishment or was he simply lost down there, and second why would the cat be down there, furthermore why would you sit quiet down there, so quiet that you would hear the cats purring. All these odd conditions are very hard to interpret and have many options and possibilities. It sort of relieves one of the box or frame that is typical for short stories and poems. As for the themes it is very clear that child experience some weird otherworldly fury and hatred towards the cat that we have no described reason for, so we are left to interpret why he hates it. It can be argued that he is perhaps afraid of the cat, and resulting in a delight when dealing with this fear, not to mention that the cat definitely feels fear towards the boy. And last but not least the killing of the cat caused him to suffer from guilt in response to his mindless aggression against the cat.
Altogether this text is set in a very odd place, with strange conditions, such as the basement and with the cat sitting there. But due to the lack of description of the child we are never really certain of what is going to happen and for all we know a 9 year old child is a not a sadist. So in a way you are intrigued to find out more as the storyline progresses leading to a very exciting tour within the abstract nature of Vernon Scannells writing universe.