The Cask of the Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

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“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is a story of one man’s revenge on another. Montresor feels insulted by Fortunato for unspecified reasons. At the height of carnival season Montresor meets Fortunato and lures him to his death with the offer of a rare sherry. Fortunato reveals before his death that he is a Freemason but Montresor is not. Montresor is a Catholic. The Catholic Church deems Freemasons as heretics. This reveals the “insult” that Montresor has had to bare from Fortunato. It is Montresor’s duty to act as the hand of God and kill this heretic. Fortunato is foolish in his trust of Montresor, believing Montresor is his friend. Fortunato is consumed with his hedonistic lifestyle to the point of it leading him to his own death. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” symbolically conveys the anti-Masonic beliefs of the Catholic Church through Montresor’s murder of Fortunato, the heretic.
Montresor was a man who came from an affluent family. His family bore a crest of “a huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel” (Poe 110). His family carried a motto of “Nemo me impune lacessit” (Poe 110) or “no one provokes me with impunity” (Poe 110). It can be inferred from this that Montresor symbolically represents the serpent striking out at the foot that is crushing it. A serpent can represent evil in the form of the devil or a heretic. This could mean that “Montresor [he] is not the serpent but the figure whose heel bruise’s the serpents head” (St John Stott 86). Montresor has taken it upon himself to be the “defender of the faith” (Rocks para. 1). It is his duty to kill the heretic Fortunato.
Fortunato reveals himself to be a Free...

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...terment of society.

Works Cited

Cervo, Nathan. “Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.” The Explicator, (51:3), 1993, 155-56.
Hutchinsson, James M. Poe. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005. 204. Google books. 204. Web. 13 November 2013.
Johnstone, Michael. The Freemasons The Illustrated Book of an Ancient Brotherhood. New York: Gramercy Books, 2005. 109-112. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable 10th ed. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 107-113. Print.
Rocks, James E. “Marginalla.” Poe Studies. Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 24 October 2013. Web. 20 November 2013.
St. John Stott, Graham. “Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.” The Explicator, (62:2), 2004, 85-88.
Thierens, A.E. General Book of the Tarot. Sacred-text.com. Evinity Publishing Inc., 2011. 61. Web. 20 November 2013.

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