Home > The Cask of Amontillado Summary & Study Guide > The Cask of Amontillado Group > Discussion Board

After all, he could have just killed him by stabbing him with a sword, so why go through all the trouble?

Well first of all, it wouldn't have made a good story.  If Poe would have just said, "I hated Fortunado; I swore revenge, so I stabbed him!!!  Ha ha ha!",  it doesn't make for a very good story.  Then, we need to consider the author himself, and some commonalities in his stories.  First of all, he likes to have a rather baffling and potentially crazy or insane narrator (consider "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat") that goes to great lengths to cover up their crime and not be discovered; all three of these stories have the narrator entombing the deceased (either in walls or floors) and then trying to cover it up and get away with it.

Along the lines of getting away with it, if he had just stabbed him, there is the chance he could be caught.  Instead, why not encase him in the depths of the city, underground, where no one really goes, and where no one would find him?  This is much more safe and would allow Montresor to continue with the knowledge that he was the only one in the entire world that knew what had happened to Fortunado.  This type of control over his enemy had to appeal to him, considering "the thousand injuries" that he had suffered at the hands of Fortunado.

One last thing to consider is the narrator's state of mind.  He is certainly quite insidious and villianous.  He takes great satisfaction in the long journey into the depths of the catacombs; he thoroughly enjoys entombing his victim.  In fact, at one point when Fortunado was struggling to escape, "The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down."  Montresor sits down to listen to Fortunado's demise with sincere enjoyment and pleasure.  This is a man who probably liked to pull the legs off of bug victims one by one just for the enjoyment of seeing the bug struggle.  He is a bit sadist, and so the catcomb scenario worked much better for his enjoyment of suffering than a quick stab would have done.