Irony in The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is a literary classic for many reasons. The story is complex and full of all kinds of irony. As the reader gets deeper into the story, the relationship between the main characters becomes more and more ambiguous. The story revolves around a revenge, but the reader never gets to know what happened between the two men to warrant a murder as gruesome as this. The story includes several examples of dramatic and verbal irony. The short story is full of verbal irony. Starting from the beginning, everything Montresor says is the opposite of what he wants to happen. A great example of this is when Montresor says “we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible,” the reader knows that the whole statement is false, but Fortunato is so drunk that he does not suspect anything. Montresor says that he …show more content…
does not want Fortunato to come to his vaults. He says that he would rather have Luchresi taste the recently bought Amontillado in his vaults. Montresor also points out Fortunato’s severe cold as the vaults are extremely damp. By seemingly trying to stop Fortunato from coming along Montresor has succeeded in making Fortunato think that it was his own idea to go to the dangerous catacombs. When in the catacombs, Montresor continues trying to persuade Fortunato to turn back, while also intoxicating him further. While Fortunato says that he drinks to all the dead people buried around them, Montresor says that he drinks to Fortunato’s long life, which the reader knows to be as false as anything can be. Montresor pretends to care for Fortunato, when it is so obvious to the reader that the only thing he cares about is his revenge. Montresor’s family motto is "Nemo me impune lacessit." In English, it means “nobody provokes me with impunity.” It’s ironic that the whole story is based on these words.
Fortunate said something offensive to Montresor and this story is him living by his family motto. It is also ironic that Fortunato is clearly very sick and grows weaker on every step they take toward the Amontillado, and he would most likely die if Montresor would just leave him all alone in the catacombs. Still, Montresor wants to kill Fortunato himself to fulfill his family’s motto. Thinking that Montresor is a mason; Fortunato makes a gesture that only masons recognize. Montresor replies by showing his trowel that he will later use to build the wall around Fortunato. Montresor is indeed a mason; only a completely different mason than Fortunato. Montresor acts literally as a mason when he walls Fortunato in down at the
catacombs. When Montresor starts to wall Fortunato in, the man with the clown hat starts to feel like going back home; only now it’s too late. Montresor gave him plenty of chances to turn back but Fortunato desired the sweet Amontillado so much that he ignored Montresor’s advice. Even Fortunato’s name is an example of irony. Fortunato can be roughly translated to “the fortunate one,” but his ending is all but fortunate. In fact, he is perhaps the most unfortunate one. He was just having fun at the carnival, when Montresor, whom Fortunato did not know he had offended, came by to lure him to a gruesome death. Perhaps the biggest irony of the story is the fact that the reader knows that Fortunato is going to die right from the very beginning, but Fortunato has no idea. It is ironic that the phrase “saved by the bell” comes from the times when people put bells on dead people so that they would not accidentally bury someone alive. However, in this story, Fortunato wears a hat with bells on it and the last thing that Montresor hears from Fortunato are these bells ringing, but Montresor has no intention of saving him. “The Cask of Amontillado” is full of verbal and dramatic irony. In fact, because of the amount of irony it contains it is said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest short story. It is an accurate representation of a man’s lust for revenge gone beyond anything that could be considered appropriate.
In the story “The Cask of Amontillado”, the author uses lots of verbal irony to emphasize the evil intentions of Montresor.One of the examples of verbal irony in the story that he uses is “The cough’s a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.” and “true--true, I replied.” The effect of this irony is it that Montresor already knows how Fortunato will die.Another example of verbal irony used in the story was when they did a toast to each other. “I drink”, he said, to the buried that repose around us.”
Within this plot of revenge, Poe uses irony and symbolism to develop his theme of a man who tries to gain absolution for the sin he is about to commit. Irony in "The Cask of Amontillado" Poe
When they arrive at the Montresor estate, Montresor leads Fortunato down the stairs into the catacombs. Down here is where the Amontillado Fortunato is going to taste and where the revenge of Montresor is going to take place. As he get closer and closer, the narrator opens up more and more to how he is going to kill his "friend". It sound like it is a premeditated murder. Montresor seems so inconspicuous that he acts like he cares about Fortunato which is still a part of his plan.
Wood, Kerry.” Literary Analysis : Irony In ‘ The Cask Of Amontillado’ by Edgar Allan Poe.”Humanities 360. Helium, Inc., 9 Nov 2007. Web.17 Mar 2014.
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” is a thrilling and a suspenseful tragedy filled with irony. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Montresor explains how he desires for revenge. “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” (233). He warns the reader something unfortunate will happen to the antagonist, Fortunato. The story follows two wine connoisseurs throughout the night as they walk through the dark catacombs. “The Cask of Amontillado,” includes verbal, situational, and dramatic irony, which causes the reader to experience suspense, confusion, and horror.
Edgar Allan Poe is a comedian. To some people, his humor may not be as appealing compared to that of a stand-up comedian, but he is wise in his ideas nonetheless. His dark sense of humor goes hand-in-hand with the sick, twisted thoughts that produce his ingenuity. His humor is sly in style yet complex in content, and he makes this extremely evident in his works. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Poe cleverly flashes his comedic bravado in front of his audience’s face through interactions between the characters and their surroundings. He leaves subtle hints which are meant to cue the readers into discovering the humor in his perverted puns. Although puns may not be his literary forte, Poe is able to utilize his uncanny sense of dark humor and add
Edgar Allan Poe is a famous writer in writing detective stories and horror stories. One of his horror stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” was talking about how a man took his revenge to his friend. However, to look deeply in this story, I found that this story was not just simply a horror tale about how a man gets his revenge in the safest way. Instead, it also demonstrates much irony in several areas: the title, the event, the season, the costume, the environment, the characters’ personalities, a man’s dignity and cockiness and at the end, the public order. he are
Edgar Allan Poe is one of greatest American authors and poets. He is well-known as a master of using irony in his story. “The Cask of Amontillado” is a horror story about revenge of Montresor upon Fortunato. Fortunato believes Montresor is his good friend, but he ends up with being chained and walled in to the catacombs. There are three types of irony used in this short story: verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony. Using these ironies, Poe wants the readers to understand about Montresor’s “friendship” with Fortunato.
At the beginning of the story, Montresor states his motive to kill Fortunato, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” Montresor doesn’t specify what Fortunato did to him, but you have to infer that he’s done some pretty serious things to deserve to die. This quote alone doesn’t give enough to create the personality of Montresor; throughout the story, Montresor gives several hints that he will not let anything stop his plan, one of which being his motto. Montresor telling the story for the first time in 50 years shows that he sticks to his word no matter what, which can be good, but then again, he did kill a man in cold blood half a century before he
A well-known writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, is extremely familiar with the use of irony. Ordinarily, when a writer uses words that have one explanation, but actually mean the opposite, he is employing irony. Ultimately, this is usually done for humor or to add emphasis. Accordingly, Poe’s use of this literary tool is dramatic and can require the use of critical thinking skills to figure out. The author uses several examples of irony in his story The Cask of Amontillado. Irony is illustrated in this story when Montresor meets Fortunato and expresses that their meeting is quite fortunate despite his eventual fate, when Fortunato is dressed as a fool, and by Fortunato’s name representing “the fortunate one”. These three examples have been selected to best exemplify the author’s use of irony.
In Edgar allen poe's, short story “The Cask of Amontillado” , the narrator, a man named Montresor describes a perfect revenge, and then tells a “true” story of how he succeeded at completing revenge with satisfaction. When Poe wrote this story he used irony, foreshadowing, and mood to engage the audience. One sentence that stood out to me was (line one pg 209), “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” Basically that’s saying, that he planned to get revenge on Fortunato, because he insulted him. The reader must personally wonder what he said to Montresor to make him seek revenge in death. In the next 3 paragraphs i will explain how Poe, used mood, foreshadowing, and irony to make this short story more interesting.
Edgar Allan Poe placed many examples of symbolism and irony in the “The Cask of Amontillado” that help to develop the themes of fraud, revenge, and pride. All throughout the story, Poe develops the themes in many ways. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is a story in which its themes and central ideas can be explained as pride and revenge.
Edgar Allan Poe's strong use of symbols throughout "The Cask of Amontillado" is what makes this story worthy of examination. The clever use of these devices by the author to shape this horrifying and gripping short story has made this piece be regarded as a classic American horror story, which revolves around the theme of vengeance and pride.
Knowing the type of person Montresor can have a manipulative sane personality and can be a crazy balanced person who wants revenge for not getting a smile back. Fortunato was foolish for falling into a trap knowing that Amontillado was not in season however, the mind of a man can easily be beguiled and manipulated. I find Fortunato’s death ironically because his name in Spanish sounds like fortunate, in the start of the story he has virtually everything he wants, but seems to be depressed because he drinks quite often even though there is a festival. To pride yourself in wine a person might have to drink often. In my opinion he responsible, for his own death I find that even if he did not want to die it was his journey that couldn’t been avoided at least he died what was at the most pride full thing in his mind tasting wine, but this wine was literally to die for. In the end he did get the best sip of wine the relief of
First off, the use of dramatic irony in the story allows the readers to recognize Montresor as a malevolent person who finds Fortunato's pain humorous. As Fortunato starts coughing Montresor suggests, "You will be ill, and I cannot be responsible you are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me, it is no matter.