Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[jays]

Please explain the meaning of "work out" in the following (The Black Cat - Adgar Allen Poe)
--------- the following ----------
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast - whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed - a brute beast to work out for me - for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more!

[redset]

Wow, you guys really like to throw yourselves in the deep end huh? This is fairly complicated prose, and the style of language is different from modern English, so it's not easy to follow if you're not used to this kind of literature. I searched for the rest of the work so I could see a little more context, and I think that 'work out' here means that the cat caused the writer to feel so much guilt and paranoia and woe, that these feelings worked themselves out. If something is buried or hidden, or trapped in some way, if it's able to make its way to the surface, or to leave or escape, then you can say it's worked its way out. So in this case you could look at the writers woe as having been brought to the surface by the memories and thoughts that the cat invokes.

[zeh88]

i think you should have given the whole piece of writing. broken passages and sentences sometimes have connection with previous or further paragraphs.
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