The Power Of Revenge In Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado

No matter who we are when we are born we are all born with a competitive spirit. We all have the desire to do better than one another even if at the expense of another. What happens if one turns its victories and superiority into what is perceived harmless banter. What becomes of the person that has been bested does he/she shrug it off, does he/she conceal it and use it as fuel to best his opponent, or does he plot revenge. In The Cask of Amontillado, the author Edgar Allen Poe gives us a tale of a scorned gentleman 's plot to seek the ultimate revenge on his one-time friend and rival. Poe put the reader in the deranged perceived mind of it murder Montresor who is giving us a deathbed illustration of his detailed execution of his former

Currently, Montresor himself has fallen from previous noble standings and struggles to maintain his family 's wealth. Fortunato makes reference to Montresor 's forgotten nobility when he says "" These vaults," he said our extensive." The Montresors," I replied "were a great and numerous family."" I forgot your coat of arms."(Poe) By Fortunato saying that he had forgotten the Montresor coat of arms gives credence that the families nobility had become diminished in their generation. Montresor. Tries to provide us with the idea that his families nobility may be part of the reason he seeks his retribution on Fortunato and not the of a cold-blooded killer. There are many that would say that Montresor 's act of confessing to his 50-year-old crime was that of deep-rooted guilt but as Rea points out in his article "Montresor 's saying that his heart through thick after he had walled catacombs does not necessarily mean that he had a guilty

Maybe Montresor is giving us his prideful details of how he got away with the perfect murder. Revealing to us that Montresor revenge was nothing more than a twisted plot of a psychopath "Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by deficits in personality and behavior. Personality deficits are marked by interpersonal and affective facets, including pathological lying, grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of remorse and callousness." (Thompson) . Montresor presents with three of the signs necessary to have a diagnosis antisocial behavior. According to Mayo Clinic, One of the symptoms is using charm or wit manipulate others for personal gain or sheer pleasure. Montresor proclaims that he smiles in Montresor 's face to hide his intention but "my smile now was at the thought of his immolation" (Poe), and he also states that " I was so pleased to him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand." two instances in the story where it could be interpreted as one of the symptoms. Another symptom is "Persistent lying or deceit to exploit others"(Mayo). The whole story of Montresor having a cask of Amontillado is predicated on a lie and almost everything he said to Fortunato was a lie from his intent on finding Luchresi to bring him to the wine to his outlandish lie about being a Mason..The last symptom that would make Montresor a