he is speaking to a priest. A priest would certainly know the nature of Montresor's soul after listening to his confessions over the years. A priest would also be required to keep Montresor's crime a secret or risk being excommunicated by the Church for disclosing the identity of a penitent who confessed a crime to him sacramentally. The reader also understands that the story is set in Italy, which is a predominantly Catholic nation. Also, the Latin phrase "In pace requiescat!" suggests that Montresor is Catholic. This additional information supports the theory that Montresor is confessing to a priest.

The narrative also seems to be a confession by nature. At the beginning of the story, Montresor explicitly states that he is determined to punish with impunity and tells the story fifty years after the crime. If Montresor committed the crime in his mid-twenties, he would be in his mid-seventies at the present moment. As a seventy-year-old man, Montresor may be close to death and is possibly making his final confession to a priest before he passes away. It is likely that Montresor has guilt weighing on his conscience and would like to unburden himself before he dies, which is why he confesses his crime to a Catholic priest.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," Montresor never explicitly states who he is addressing his narrative to, but one interpretation is that he is speaking to a Catholic priest. In the first paragraph of the short story, Montresor says, "You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat." One could infer that only a Catholic priest would know the nature of Montresor's soul, so the reader can interpret the story as a confession. The audience knows that Montresor is serious about getting away with his crime, which significantly narrows the possibilities of people he could be addressing. While it is possible that Montresor is speaking to his wife, close friend, or relative, the audience recognizes that Montresor would be jeopardizing his freedom and risk ruining his reputation.

If Montresor were to tell a family member or close friend, they would more than likely view him differently or possibly entertain the idea of turning him in to the authorities. It is also significant that Montresor is telling his story fifty years after the crime. Montresor is more than likely an old man telling his story and possibly giving a deathbed confession to a priest. Montresor also may be hinting that he feels guilty for committing the crime by saying, "My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs."

“The Cask of Amontillado” can be interpreted as a confession by a man to his priest. For fifty years, Montresor has kept the terrible secret of how he exacted revenge on Fortunato to himself. But now, for one reason or another, he's finally felt able to reveal what happened on that fateful day during carnival a half-century ago.

Though it's never explicitly spelled out that Montresor is actually confessing to a priest, there are certain clues that point in that direction. For instance, when Montresor says, “You, who know so well the nature of my soul,” it's difficult to see who else he could be referring to other than a priest or spiritual confessor.

It's almost certain that Montresor isn't telling his story to a friend or family member. Their opinion of Montresor would be changed forever—and not for the better—if he revealed to them that he was, in effect, a murderer. Besides, Montresor, even after all these years, still wants to get away with his crime, and confessing that crime to a friend or family member would run the risk of his being apprehended by the authorities.

But a priest, on the other hand, is duty-bound not to betray a confidence. Whatever Montresor says to him in the confines of the confessional is not to be revealed to another living soul. In telling his story to a priest, then, Montresor can unburden his soul while at the same time ensuring that he will continue to get away with the crime he committed so many years ago.

While the person to whom Montresor narrates the story of his revenge is never specified, several clues indicate he is telling it to his priest. First, he addresses the person as "You, who so well know the nature of my soul." The term "soul" rather than "me" would indicate he addresses a spiritual advisor. Given that Montresor is an adult when he walls up Fortunato, he must very old now: "For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them [Fortunato's remains]." In other words, fifty years have gone by since Montresor did his evil deed, so we might assume he is on his deathbed and confessing his misdeeds. We can draw the conclusion that he is Catholic since the story takes place in Venice, a Catholic city. That he feels guilt, which would lead him to confess, is suggested by his saying "my heart grew sick" as he finishes his task of the walling up his enemy. He explains that this heartsickness was due to "the dampness of the catacombs" but we as readers might suspect a guilty conscience has motivated Montresor to break his long silence. 

I have always felt that Montresor's narrative is not to be taken as being spoken aloud to another person who is present--as in Robert Browning's dramatic monologues--but is a written document which is found among a lot of other papers after the death of the recipient or even found among the papers of Montresor himself, who wrote it while drunk and then decided not to mail it the next day. For one thing, the narrative (which I will not call a confession) is in English. That suggests that the man who takes credit as the author, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, somehow got hold of the original document written in French or Italian, and translated it for publication in a magazine. I imagine the person to whom the original letter was addressed to be a woman who has known Montresor all his life--someone like one of the confidantes (or ficelles) in stories by Henry James. The basic idea is simple enough: A man writes a letter and it is found many years later and published because it tells an interesting true story. One of Henry James's better known stories, "The Aspern Papers," deals with documents written by a poet who died many years before the story takes place.

 "The Cask of Amontillado" begins with Montresor addressing someone familiar, someone who knows the "nature of his soul."  Now, as to who that might be is anyone's guess.  My thought would be that after fifty years, the only person I would trust enough to tell a secret like this would be my husband or wife and/or possibly my children.  The only reason I would do it then would be to clear my conscience.  Another case scenario could be a direct descendant of Fortunato, which sort of invalidates the whole "nature of his soul" thing, but hey, we are inferring, right.  Suppose a direct descendant of Fortunato's visted upon Montresor's death bed, and in an attempt to gain a little further revenge, he spills this whole story to them.  That makes for an interesting spin on the story if you are guessing to whom the narrator is making his confession.  Hope this helps.  Brenda

Many critics believe that Montresor is confessing to a priest, perhaps on his death bed.  Montresor makes it very clear that the action of this story took place 50 years prior to this, and he says that the best way to get revenge is only to do so without ever getting caught.  Montresor was an adult when he killed Fortunato, so 50 years later would make him an elderly man.  In order to still enjoy his revenge, he could not tell anyone in authority what happened.  A priest would have to keep his secret, and he might, as an old man, feel the need to confess his sins before he died.