Essay About Fatal Revenge Of Our Narrator Montesor And Short Story

The Cask of Amontillado Critical Response
The Cask of Amontillado Critical Response
“The Cask of
Amontillado” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that was first published
in Godeys Ladys Book in November of 1846. It takes place in a city
without a name in the country of Italy, possibly within the 18th century.
The plot is concerned with the fatal revenge of our narrator Montesor upon
his friend who he feels had insulted him, though the particulars of said
insult are never revealed. Montesor plots to murder his friend Fortunato
over said insult when he becomes excessively drunk and dressed like a
jester at the town Carnival. In order to get Fortunato close enough to him
to be murdered, he lies and says that he has a large amount of Amontillado,
a very valuable and rare wine. He states that he needs his friends opinion
on the matter, and they wander to the wine cellars and into the catacombs.
Due to the dampness of the catacombs, Montesor warns Fortunato that he will
catch a bad cough, yet Fortunato wishes to continue, stating he will not
“die of a cough.” As they continue on, a drunken Fortunato is unsuspecting
yet unresisting as Montesor chains him to a wall. Montesor decides to leave
his friend and bury him alive in the catacombs. A quickly sobered Fortunato
realizes this and begins to scream for help, yet his screams are drowned by
the laughs of Montesor because no one can hear him. As Montesor places the
last imprisoning stone, he drops a burning torch within, leaving his friend
to die. Within the last few sentences of the story, Montesor states that it
had been fifty years since the murder of his friend and that he had never
been caught. Montesor ends Poes story by stating, “In pace requiescat,”
meaning may he rest in peace. The major themes in this short story are very
apparent: revenge and betrayal. Although the story is indeed frightening,
Montesors recollection of the murderous night makes it rather difficult to
understand his motives for killing his dear friend. However, it does add to
the level of terror within the story. So for my paper I am going to discuss
how Poes work, demonstrated within “The Cask of Amontillado,” displays
that every small detail helps to intensify the effect of terror. In this
story, unlike many other terrifying short stories, there is no detective.
My point being, the narrator himself was describing in detail as to how he
committed the murder. Usually with others, there is a detective the reader
follows as though helping to solve the mystery. Without this, it is up to
the reader to solve the mystery. Poe himself indeed knows this as he has
once stated that his work proceeds, “to its completion with the precision
and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.” Although it tells of the
“thousand injuries” imposed by Fortunato upon Montesor the motive for the
murder is left very vague. Many readers and critics alike are usually ones
to conclude that Montesor was simply insane, with no valid motive or reason
at all for killing his friend. Many critics share this view of insanity.
One critic, Edward Hutchins Davidson writes,
“We never know what has made him hate Fortunato nor are we awake that he
has ever laid out any plan to effect his revenge….There is nothing
intellectual here; everything is mad and improvisatory—and