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Cask of Amontillado Essay

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Poe's Stories

Edgar allan poe, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is one of Poe’s shorter classic tales. It was first published in 1846 in a women’s magazine named Godey’s Lady’s Book , a hugely popular magazine in the US in the mid-nineteenth century. (The magazine had published one of Poe’s earliest stories, ‘The Visionary’, twelve years earlier.)

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is one of Poe’s ‘revenge stories’, and the way he depicts the avenger’s psychological state is worthy of closer analysis.

Plot summary

First, a quick summary of the plot of ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, which is our way of saying ‘those who wish to avoid spoilers please look away now’. The story is narrated by the murderer, Montresor, who takes revenge on a fellow Italian nobleman, Fortunato, during the carnival season.

Fortunato, drunk and dressed in motley, boasts that he can tell an amontillado from other sherry, and so Montresor lures his rival down into Montresor’s family catacombs, saying that he has some amontillado for Fortunato to taste. Fortunato finds the descent difficult, thanks to the nitre in the catacombs, which exacerbate his bad chest.

Montresor plays on Fortunato’s inherent sense of pride in his knowledge of wines, by telling him that, if Fortunato cannot make the journey into the catacombs, they can turn back and Montresor can give the wine to Luchresi, another nobleman, instead.

Of course, this only makes Fortunato even more determined to be the one to taste the amontillado, and so they two of them keep going. When they arrive down in the catacombs, Montresor having plied his enemy with Medoc wine, he chains his drunken rival to the wall and then proceeds to wall him up inside the family vault, burying the man alive.

Fortunato at first believes it to be a jest, but then realises that he has been left here to die. Fifty years later, Montresor says that the body of Fortunato is still there in the vault.

Why does Montresor want revenge on Fortunato? This is where we see Poe’s genius (a contentious issue – W. B. Yeats thought his writing ‘vulgar’ and T. S. Eliot, whilst praising the plots and ideas of Poe’s stories, thought the execution of them careless) can be seen most clearly in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.

For Montresor has every reason to confide to us – via his close friend, the addressee of his narrative, who is our stand-in in the story – his reason for wishing to kill Fortunato. But instead of getting a clear motive from him, we are instead given a series of possible reasons, none of which quite rings true.

It may be that Poe learned this idea from Shakespeare’s Othello , where the villainous Iago’s reasons for wishing to destroy Othello’s life are unclear, not because Iago offers us no plausible reasons for wishing to cause trouble, but because he offers us several , the effect of which is that they all cancel each other out, to an extent.

This is made clear in the opening words of the story:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled – but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.

Immediately, we are given an insight into the motive for the crime, but there is a sense that Montresor  wants  his crime – which he almost views as a work of art – to be acknowledged and even appreciated, in a strange way, by the victim. In other words, as Montresor explains, he wants Fortunato to know who has killed him (and why), but he wants to make sure nobody else finds out:

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.

That opening sentence is like a literal enactment of the familiar phrase, ‘to add insult to injury’. This provides a key clue to the motivation – shaky and vague as it is – of Montresor. His revenge is not motivated primarily by any tangible harm that Fortunato has done him, so much as a sense of resentment, a way Fortunato has of making Montresor feel inferior.

There are several clues offered by Poe in the story which suggest this as a plausible analysis of Montresor’s character and motivation. First of all, there is Fortunato’s name, suggesting fortune (wealth) but also being fortunate (luck), two qualities which don’t tend to enamour people to you, even though one’s possession of one or both of them hasn’t necessarily harmed anyone else. As F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby , put it: ‘Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.’

Although ‘Montresor’, the narrator’s name, suggests literally a ‘mountain of treasure’, the fortunate Fortunato still has the edge: as we know from such stories as Lawrence’s ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ , money is worth little without luck, for luck is how one acquires more money (though hard work doesn’t go amiss, of course). Another clue comes when Montresor fails to interpret a gesture made by Fortunato:

He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement – a grotesque one.

‘You do not comprehend?’ he said.

This taut, clipped conversation continues, as Poe deftly outlines the underlying reasons for the animosity that exists between the two men. In short, Montresor fails to understand the significance of the gesture Fortunato performs, leading Fortunato to suspect that Montresor is not a mason. Montresor insists he is, but Fortunato is having none of it:

‘You? Impossible! A mason?’

Fortunato asks Montresor for a sign that he really is a freemason:

‘It is this,’ I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel.

‘You jest,’ he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. ‘But let us proceed to the Amontillado.’

This moment suggests a further underlying reason for Montresor’s desire for revenge: Fortunato insults him by belittling him and reminding him that he is not part of the same ‘club’ as Fortunato.

It may be that Montresor – his name perhaps suggesting acquired wealth rather than first-rank nobility like Fortunato (who has inherited his wealth and name by being ‘fortunate’ enough to be born into the right aristocratic family) – is not quite of the same pedigree as Fortunato, and so has had none of the advantages and benefits that Fortunato has enjoyed.

Poe makes his point by some subterranean wordplay on mason : Fortunato refers to the freemasons, that secret elite society known for its mutual favours and coded signs, gestures, and rituals, but Montresor’s trowel suggests the stonemasons, those artisans and labourers who are not aristocrats but possess great manual skill.

This pun is confirmed later in the story by Montresor’s reference to the ‘mason-work’ when he is walling his hapless rival up inside the catacombs.

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ can be productively linked – via comparative analysis – with a number of other Poe stories. Its murderous narrator links the story to ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘ The Black Cat ’; its focus on revenge and the misuse of alcohol links it to ‘Hop-Frog’; the alcohol motif is also seen in ‘The Black Cat’, while the use of jester’s motley also suggests a link with Poe’s other great revenge tale, ‘Hop-Frog’, where the title character is a jester in the employ of a corrupt king.

The live burial motif is also found in Poe’s story ‘ The Premature Burial ’ and ‘ The Fall of the House of Usher ’.

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10 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’”

There is something very odd about this story – the title emphasises the ‘amontillado’ which the murderer uses as bait for his victim, and the victim dreamily repeates the word as if it refers to something very unusual and precious. But unless there is something special about this cask – and no one suggests that there is, it could just as easily be the kind of wine you can buy in Sainsbury’s – and I frequently do, to use in cooking. And there is the dismissal of the man who ‘cannot tell Amontillado from sherry’ – but actually of course Amontillado is sherry. And it’s not an ‘Italian wine’ but Spanish. Did Poe know all this? is he implying that the two are not the aristocrats they seem and claim to be, but a pair of drunken louts? or did he use the name because it sounded exotic, without knowing what it was…

I think he used the whole ‘Amontillado is sherry’ thing as a joke. Fortunato and Montresor are an awful lot alike, after all. Even there names mean the same thing.

This is one of my favorite Poe stories and a fantastic analysis!

Thank you! It’s one of my favourites too – and there are plenty of fine stories to choose from :)

Nobody likes a clever dick, do they?

Sent from my iPad

Iago–yes, that is very clear intertextuality. I’ll bring that in with my Othello unit with my seniors.

Reblogged this on Greek Canadian Literature .

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Interesting analysis. Revenge can not resolve conflict

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Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis Essay

From the onset, an author lets the readers know which characters are important. This is the norm in any literary medium, including novels, plays, poems, and short stories. Other characters in works of literature are given a considerably less face time compared to the main character. In long works of literature such as novels and plays, minor characters take up a substantial space of the literary medium. However, in short, literary works such as poems and short stories, the main characters end up taking most of the space with minor characters contending with very little coverage. In short stories, the author mostly focuses on the protagonist’s details. Therefore, only very few and relevant details about the non-protagonist characters are supplied to the readers. Nevertheless, those few details and subtle, indirect hints often help the reader to infer some helpful insights and understandings about the non-protagonist characters in a short story. This paper defends this notion using details about the character of Fortunato in Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.”

The main character in “The Cask of Amontillado” is Montresor with Fortunato being a minor character in the short story. Also, Montresor is the story’s narrator, and a lot of details about his character are revealed in the story. On the other hand, the readers only learn about Fortunato’s character by gathering few and scanty details about him through his actions, words, and Montresor, the story’s narrator. At the beginning of the story, it is revealed that Fortunato is the victim of Montessori’s revenge plan. However, Montresor, the narrator does not reveal much about his prey, including the details about how Fortunato insulted him. After learning that Fortunato is the victim, the readers can sympathize and relate with his character. The fact that Fortunato’s accuser does not back his accusations against him makes the readers suspicious.

I t is also possible to know that Fortunato is addicted to wine. Montresor’s revenge plan is modeled around Fortunato’s wine addiction. Montresor is almost certain that Fortunato cannot resist the temptation of wine. On the other hand, Fortunato falls into Montresor’s trap quite easily. Even when Fortunato starts to cough, and Montresor offers him the chance to back off from his quest, he does not give up on the chance of tasting good wine. Fortunato is already drunk by the time he and Montresor get to the catacombs. Fortunato’s addiction seems to be his main undoing and eventually leads to his defeat.

Even though the short story does not dwell on Fortunato’s character, readers can decipher that he is insensitive. First, it does not look like he realizes that he hurt Fortunato. Second, when Montresor comes to carry out his revenge on him (Fortunato), he does not notice that Montresor is angry with him. Fortunato’s insensitivity also makes him a poor judge of character. Halfway through his execution, he still thinks that Montresor is playing a joke on him.

Another Fortunato’s trait that can be deduced from the few details in the short story is his greed and pride. When Montresor offers the wine tasting chance to someone else, Fortunato opposes this idea vehemently. Moreover, it is revealed that Fortunato is naïve. Fortunato follows Montresor sheepishly without considering the suspicious environment they are going past when going to fetch the wine. This naivety ends up being Fortunato’s main undoing.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 13). Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-literature-analysis/

"Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis." IvyPanda , 13 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-literature-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis'. 13 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis." May 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-literature-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis." May 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-literature-analysis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Edgar Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis." May 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-literature-analysis/.

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Poe’s Art of Seduction: Montresor as Author in “The Cask of Amontillado”

• Matthew Hutton

 Herein I argue that the character Montresor, the narrator and protagonist of “The Cask of Amontillado,” serves as Poe’s fictional illustration of an author engaged in the creative process. Montresor, in his actions and in his recounting of them, executes a “plot” that puts Poe’s theory of “unity of effect” to the test. Montresor seduces Fortunato just as Poe seduces the reader: through verbal craft. His intent is to induce terror, and the measure of his success is the measure of the degree to which he achieves maximum effect. Montresor’s plan, his execution, and his delivery of the tale all exemplify the principles Poe outlines in “The Philosophy of Composition”—an essay published just months before “The Cask of Amontillado.”

In the first section of the paper, I trace Poe’s development of the unity of effect theory in the years leading up to the publishing of “The Philosophy of Composition.” I then apply the theory to a close reading of “Amontillado.” In the final section, I discuss the tacit contract between author and reader required for Poe’s brand of horror. In observing the correlation between Poe’s conception of the author and his fictional illustration of the author, we see how Poe sets the preconditions for 20th-Century genre fiction by placing the audience in the foreground—an emphasis that would find full flower in the age of mass media, when the distinction between “art” and “entertainment” would become immaterial.

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