In Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Cask of Amontillado the main character Montresor tricks his friend Fortunato into his catacombs and buries him alive. Edgar Allen Poe’s character commits this deed out of a need for revenge because of some hurt that was committed against him. Poe conveys this need for revenge through his attention to the small details within his story.
Poe’s naming of his characters was not something that happened by chance. Poe used names that had specific meanings and translations that would match well with his two characters. “Tresor comes from thesaurus, meaning a storehouse or hoard; Fortunato derives from fortunatus, translated as made prosperous or happy” (Gruesser). In the story Montresor not only has a literal storehouse, his family catacomb, but he is also storing his hurt in his heart which is why he is overwhelmed with hatred and his need for revenge. Fortunato is dressed as a jester and ready to have a fun time. This happiness and carefree persona matched the derivative of what his name means. Poe uses these names as almost a foreshadowing to what is to come in the future. Montresor is storing away his anger and Fortunato has no anger in him, which adds fuel to Montresor’s need for revenge.
The type of wine that Poe uses in his story is also not by random. Amontillado sherry takes a lot of time to produce and it requires a very delicate and precise process to make. The reason Poe chose to use this wine is because just like the process of making Amontillado sherry, Montresor plan to punish Fortunato was very precise and long thought out down to the last detail. Michael Jay Lewis said in his own paper, “we can see several links between the process of creating amontillado and Montresor’s process of kil...
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... details to demonstrate one man’s need for revenge. He choses the characters names, the wine, and how they are dressed all for the very specific purpose of revealing their character and their intent. Poe’s attention to this detail is what intensifies the awareness of how badly Montresor is set of getting his revenge on Fortunato.
Works Cited
Gruesser, John. “Poe’s ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’.” Explicator 56.3 (1998): 129-130.
MLA International Bibliography. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Lewis, Michael Jay. “Refining A Fortunato Amontillado.” Explicator 69.4 (2001): 179
183. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 Mar. 2014
Platizky, Roger. “Poe’s ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’.” Explicator 57.4 (1994): 206-209.
MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Poe, Edgar A. "The Cask of Amontillado”.1846. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
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Have you ever met someone so clever, determined, and cruel to leave a man to die over an insult? Montresor is the perfect example of these character traits. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, by Edgar Allan Poe, Montresor uses all of these character traits to get revenge on Fortunado for insulting his family name. Montresor’s clever planning, determination for revenge, and cruel murder are the perfect combination for his unequaled revenge.
The protagonists Montresor wants to get back at Fortunato for deeply insulting him and Montresor vows for revenge. During the fall carnival, he sees his opportunity and is quick to pounce on this and put his plan into place. “With Fortunato intoxicated and falling and stumbling all over the place Montresor knows that the time is now” (Russell 211). Montresor knows Fortunato’s weakness for wine and Montresor tells him he found Amontillado a very rare wine and it is in his vault. Montresor knows how far Fortunato will go for wine as rare as Amontillado and that is what eventually leads to his tormented and revengeful death. Edgar Allan Poe also gives lots of scenes that foreshadow to the future and the plotting about the death of Fortunato and the steps leading up to it. “The great example is putting Montresor into the future fifty years later telling the story and everything that went into the murder that he had committed” (Elliot 268). Poe depicts that revenge is very sweet and even fifty years later, that the deep gothic death and revenge themes still show up in Poe’s writings (Russell
Fortunato is fortunes favorite- the Lady Fortunato, Lady luck or God's favorite. Montressor is more material in the fact Tresor means storehouse or hoard. Montressor is jealous that Fortunato was so "rich, respected, admired, beloved..." He was not, so everyday was like an insult seeing Fortunato. Montressor invites Fortunato to his vaults where he keeps his wine selection. He told Fortunato of the Amontillado which Luchesi good not appreciate like he could.
With a premeditated motive to commit such an act, the culprit, Montressor, thinks, constructs and orchestrates a presumed murder against his insulter, Fortunado. “Poe begins by describing, in characteristically precise and logical detail, Montresor’s (and Poe’s) idea of perfect revenge. At the same time, he needed to end his story by telling how his revenge had affected him. When Fortunatosays, “For the love of god, Montresor!” and Montresor repeats, “Yes, for the love of God,” Poe is indicating that Montresor is already experiencing the closure he sought”(Delaney 39) Unbeknownst why he wants retribution, or what it is that his victim has done to compel Montressor to kill him. What is given is a recount of the night under discussion.
Fortunato has previously had more power over Montresor and the entirety of The Cask of Amontillado is the shifting of power from Fortunato to Montresor and this is all shown through wine. One way Poe shows the shifting balance of power is through the amount of wine Montresor drinks, one of the best quotes to represent this is when Fortunato and Montresor are walking through the wine cellar and Montresor pulls a wine bottle from a row and writes, ““Drink,” I said, presenting him the wine. He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled” (181). The bells jingled is a nod to the jester 's costume that Fortunato is wearing and the jingling of the bells while Fortunato is taking a drink symbolizes how he is becoming more and more of a fool. The more drunk fortunato is, the less power he has compared to Montresor. Another example of Poe using wine to show the transfer of power is a few lines down when he writes. “The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs” (181). Again Poe uses both wine and the jingling of the bells to capitalize on how Fortunato is being duped. There is also a lot of foreshadowing her because the walls are piled with skeletons, but fortunato is not able to
In her article, Renee utters that when the thought of vengeance build up in an individual’s brain, it coerces him insane and does not tolerate him to present it a second thought. The first sentence of the story, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge,” clearly describes the whole theme of the story as a deeply enrooted revenge in Montresor’s mind” which is an absolute portrayal of retribution that occurs due to arrogance and jealousy. Author sees himself as a superior individual and was victimized by a superiority complex which is quite visible through the phrases which he wrote in the story that Montressor expresses superiority as showed his victim as a foolish person by attributing weird physical appearance and dress appearance in which he described his dress code of “tight fitting parti striped dress and head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells.”
Poe uses the aspects of dramatic and verbal irony, foreshadowing and symbolism to shape his tale of revenge. Fortunato's fate is death and Montresor tries to make his intentions seem honorable. His intentions were not honorable, just evil. He does however, manage to get what he set out for, revenge.
Poe starts off the story ironically with Montresor finding Fortunato near carnival season, where “[h]e had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells” (156). Most readers can deduce that Fortunato’s outfit was a jester’s costume, which is often worn at festivals and carnivals. Poe deliberately placed him in this costume as a hint of what was to come, for Montresor intended to make a fool out of Fortunato as he had made a fool out of him.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor sets out on a vengeful mission that will end Fortunato’s life in an untimely fate. Montresor appeals to Fortunato’s love for wine to tempt the unsuspecting fellow to his impending doom. While Montresor tricks the foolish Fortunato frightfully, it is ultimately Fortunato’s pride that leads to his demise in the crypt. Poe uses several literary devices to foreshadow this murderous exploit of Montresor. Through the use of irony, symbolism, and imagery, the story entices readers to delve into the relationships and differences between Montresor and Fortunato.
Because Montresor narrates the story in the first person, the reader is able to perceive his thoughts and understand his motivations and justifications for his ruthless murder in a manner which a third person point of view would not allow. Montresor’s personal narration of the events of the story does not justify his crime in the audience’s eyes, but it does offer a unique opportunity for the audience to view a murder from the perspective of a madman killer. It is Poe’s usage of this unique angle that causes the story to be so captivating and gruesomely fascinating. As the story opens, Montresor explains why it is necessary that he “not only punish but punish with impunity” to avenge for Fortunado’s insult to him. This justification for his crime is a piece of information that the audience is able to learn only because they are permitted inside the mind of the protagonist. In the final scene, when Montresor is carrying out his murder pl...
Montresor is the main character who is narrating from the viewpoint of someone in the story that is being told. This gives bias towards Montresor because the audience feels the need to root for him since he is telling the story. Montresor, in the beginning, is able to justify the acts he is about to do, while we are not able to hear Fortunato defend or explain what he has done to Montresor that would cause him to take those actions. “…but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” (Poe 108). Since it is told through Montresor, the readers are also able to hear what his thoughts are. This adds an extra layer to the story by giving not only what he is saying to Fortunato to get him to do what he wants, but also his true intentions and thought processes while he is executing his master plan. He explains to the readers that he manipulated his servants into leaving his house for the night so that no one would witness Fortunato at his home. “These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance…” (Poe
Alcohol is a commonly used symbol in Poe’s literature and it has a very unfortunate effect on his characters. When Montresor leads Fortunato to the river’s bed, he decides to further inebriate Fortunato. Before continuing he “broke and reached him a flagon of De Grâve. [Fortunato] emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light.” This exemplifies how alcohol can be misused because Montresor takes advantage ...
How simple, indeed--at least until we examine a group of irreconcilable paradoxes in the story. To begin with, the names Montresor and Fortunato are synonymous. (Hoffman 223) Secondly, we find that the motive for the crime was some unnamed insult. Motives for killing someone should be important enough to detail. Why does Poe have Montresor gloss over the motives? One view is that Montresor relates the details of the murder not to justify his actions, but as a form of confession. But if this be confession, where is the regret? Again, Poe leaves his readers mystified concerning the time and location for issuance of the narrative voice. If Montresor still lives, he must be a very old man. If so, the phantasms of his deed may have horrified him all of his life. Then why does he not seem horrified? If this be confession, then why does he seem not penitent?
This immediate familiarity helps the reader to see inside the calculating mind of Montresor, whom we later learn is a killer. When talking about the past insults of Fortunato, he takes on a cold, determined tone: “At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled […] I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong” (Poe, 618).
The major characteristics of the narrator and main character, Montresor, are anger, hatred, and revenge. In the story, he is angry with Fortunato because he believes that Fortunato has wronged and insulted him many times by saying, “thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could…he ventured upon insult…” (Poe). In addition, Montresor’s hatred for Fortunato goes so far that he believes he must kill Fortunato. He mentions this in the story as, “[y]ou, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat” (Poe). He seems to say that his soul is made of hatred and goes on to say he must give Fortunato the utmost punishment: death. Montresor even shows traits of revenge when he says, “…but when [Fortunato] ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” and “...I would be avenged…” (Poe). He is saying that he will get revenge on Fortunato, whom he is angry with and hates for being insulted by.