The Summary Of The Cask Of Amontillado
The Cask of Amontillado is a short horror story written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1846. The short tale takes place in a city of Italy during the carnival, we begin to follow the protagonist, who is also the narrator of the story, Montresor. From the beginning to the very end of the story, we follow through the thoughts and motives of Montresor as well as him describing the qualities of perfect revenge and tells how he achieves an act of revenge to complete self-satisfaction successfully. Through the usage of the first-person view, theme, and characterization, Edgar Poe creates a mood initiating horror of judgment and punishment in the Cask of Amontillado.
To start, Montresor opens up by stating that he has been insulted by a friendly loved enemy of his, Fortunato, and seeks revenge without placing himself at risk of danger. With this idea at hand, Montresor decides that he will use Fortunato’s appreciation of wine against him, lure him inside the depths of a wine vault, and trap him in the interior of an ancient catacomb burying him alive. The characters that Edgar Poe created helps push the horror in the story further, Montessor for example, we can see him as an glismp of the darker sense of human nature which makes him a compelling character. Although he is intelligent as he tells his skill of planning for Fortunato's death, he is manipulative, cold, and dishonest. On the other hand, we have Fortunato who ironically is dressed up as a clown because he is portrayed as a fool in the story that Montessor tells us, in his point of view- which can be distorted. Though Fortunato's character he has a lot of ego, avarice, and competitiveness problems, and because of those traits Montessor uses those against him.
The theme of the story is revenge and the unethical influence behind it. In the first paragraph, we get an insight into what Montressor’s idea of revenge is “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 as such to him who has done the wrong.” (Poe 1846). This quote proposes that if someone is penalizing another person for a crime, they would only succeed if one does not suffer themselves and if the other person knows who is punishing them and why. Throughout the story, we are not given any specific reason why Montresor wants to seek vengeance. The feeling of revenge of this story seems to take the shape of an overwhelming rate of hatred that displaces the original wrongdoing and makes itself become a cause.
In the most general way, revenge itself motivates Montresor; he does not explain himself because there is nothing to explain and appears to put himself in a place where he thinks that he has been victimized and or thinks that suffocating is the right way to punish someone for whatever they have done.
