The Cask of Amontillado Group

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mignonne
mignonne

In "The Cask of Amontillado" why did he want to kill Fortunado?

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Posted by mignonne on Wednesday February 4, 2009 at 2:00 PM and tagged with fortunado, montresor, murder, revenge, the cask of amontillado.

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  1. mrs-campbell Teacher
    High School - 11th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    You might be getting the names mixed up; "Amontillado" is the name of the fine wine that the two main characters are going down under the city to fetch.  The two main characters are Fortunado (the unfortunate victim), and Montresor (the narrator who does the killing).  Right in the very beginning of the story, Montresor states his reasons for wanting to kill Fortunado:  "THE THOUSAND INJURIES of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge."

    We don't know many of the details, but apparently Fortunado had heaped "thousands" of injuries upon the narrator, and horror of horrors, had actually had the audacity to "insult" him.  This prompts Montresor to seek his revenge.  Because we don't know the details, we are left to wonder what in the world could have been so bad to prompt Montresor to the twisted kind of revenge that he finally succeeds with.  So, repeated injury and insult were the reasons he wanted to harm Fortunado.

     

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/cask-amontillado-text/the-cask-of-a...
    http://www.enotes.com/cask-amontillado/summary

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    Posted by mrs-campbell on Wednesday February 4, 2009 at 3:21 PM