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The Cask of Amontillado
There is a great deal of dramatic irony in this story. Dramatic irony is created when the audience, or reader, knows something that one or more characters do not. In this story, we, of course, know...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor, the narrator, says that it is the "carnival season," the time just before the Lenten season when many largely Catholic European countries (such as Italy) celebrate—similar to Mardi...
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The Cask of Amontillado
There are a number of symbols in "The Cask of Amontillado." As with all literary symbols, they give us a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the story and its themes. For example, we have...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is this story's narrator, and he is quite different than most narrators that readers come into contact with. Most readers assume the narrator is going to be a "good guy" and trustworthy,...
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The Cask of Amontillado
It is not exactly clear under what precise conditions Montresor is recounting the events of that terrible day. It may be some kind of confession, or it may not even be a true story. Who knows? The...
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The Cask of Amontillado
It is an expression of Montresor's utter sadism. By screaming even more loudly than the hapless Fortunato, he is adding to the sense of terror that must be gripping the victim of his terrible...
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The Cask of Amontillado
We know very little about Montresor, the narrator, by the second sentence of the story. We do realize from the first sentence that he is a proud and vengeful man who vows to punish when he is...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is portrayed as a vindictive, calculating individual who takes extreme precaution in formulating the perfect revenge on the unsuspecting Fortunato. Montresor mentions that Fortunato has...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor, Poe’s narrator, demonstrates his superior knowledge of human psychology when he manipulates Fortunato’s ego. Montresor claims that Fortunato “knew a lot about fine wines, and...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Fortunato, Montresor's enemy and eventual victim in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," is not a very clearcut character to the reader, but he does exhibit a few character flaws according to...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor's treatment of Fortunato in Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is laced with irony. In large part, the irony develops the theme that flattery can be weaponized to hurt the truly vain....
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The Cask of Amontillado
When Montresor, the narrator, encounters Fortunato, Fortunato is already somewhat drunk. Montresor takes the opportunity to entice Fortunato into the catacombs by appealing to his ego and inviting...
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The Cask of Amontillado
The story's plot is driven by the fact that Fortunato does not realize that Montresor, the narrator, is going to kill him. This constitutes dramatic irony, because we know more than the character...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Mood refers to the emotional atmosphere of the text, or the feeling the text attempts to inspire within the reader. The mood of this particular story is rather dark and tense as a result of the...
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The Cask of Amontillado
The setting for the majority of the story is the Montresor family catacombs. Montresor himself describes them as "insufferably damp [and] encrusted with nitre": hardly pleasant. Furthermore, it...
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The Cask of Amontillado
In the last lines of his story, Montresor tells his audience that for "half of a century no mortal has disturbed" Fortunato's bones behind the brick wall at the back of the burial vaults belonging...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Fortunato follows Montresor down a long, winding staircase to the Montresor family catacombs. Fortunato then hesitates for a few minutes before entering into the vaults because the niter on the...
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The Cask of Amontillado
In a literary work, situational irony refers to a gap between what is expected to happen and what actually does happen. There are a number of examples of this literary device in "The Cask of...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" is all about who has power over who (at least in Montresor's mind, that is). At the beginning of the famous short story, we learn from Montresor, the...
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The Cask of Amontillado
There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Fortunato's murder was premeditated. In the first line of the story, the narrator and murderer, Montresor, says that when Fortunato insulted him,...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor says that he "fettered" Fortunato to the wall: In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is the unreliable narrator, meaning that we only experience the story through his subjective point of view. It can be said that everyone is the hero of his or her own story, and we...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is so proud of his plan because it was successful. He states in the last line of the story that for fifty years Fortunato has been walled up. Nobody has disturbed his final resting...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor says he has suffered a "thousand" injuries from Fortunato but that, in the end, it is an insult that leads him to plot revenge. However, although he feels his pride has been damaged,...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Fortunato says that he does not want Montresor, the narrator, to go to the other wine expert in town, Luchesi, because "Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." In other words, then, Fortunato...
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The Cask of Amontillado
I think that is possible, yes. Ultimately, Montresor walls Fortunato into a hidden recess at the far back of his family's catacombs, and it seems, some fifty years later, that he has been unable to...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Revenge is an important theme in the story, and much of the plot hinges on Montresor's understanding of this concept. Montresor understands revenge, which he understands as striking back when you...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Dramatic irony occurs when characters in a story are unaware of things known by the reader, thereby creating suspense or humor. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," we know...
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The Cask of Amontillado
The mood of this story is characterized by foreboding and danger. We know from the outset that Montresor is planning to do something terrible to Fortunato. He says, "I would be avenged" and that "I...
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The Cask of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" builds towards a suspenseful conclusion by presenting, in a chronological way, the method that the narrator uses to get revenge on Fortunato. At the beginning of the...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Fortunato offended Montresor numerous times in the past, and Montresor seeks revenge by burying him alive. After running into Fortunato, who had been drinking excessive amounts of wine throughout...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor never mentions even one of the "thousand injuries" that Fortunato has supposedly inflicted upon him: The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is likely telling this story to his confessor at the end of his life. While we don't know this for a fact, several context clues indicate this is an end-of-life confession. First, the...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Poe actually never has Montresor state the specific reasons behind his wanting revenge, though he hints at several possibilities. Although he does mention injuries and insults, he never reveals...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Foreshadowing is a warning or hint of an event that is going to occur later on in a story, movie, or novel. In "The Cask of Amontillado," Poe uses foreshadowing by suggesting something very bad is...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor brings Fortunato into the catacombs beneath his home. Montresor knows all his servants will be away enjoying the Mardi Gras celebrations, so his home is empty. Montresor leads the drunken...
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The Cask of Amontillado
One of the biggest reason has to do with the fact that Fortunato is very, very drunk. The narrator makes sure to have him drink as much wine as possible as they progress along the passageways. Of...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor describes Fortunato as someone who has injured and insulted him one too many times, and so now Montresor has sworn revenge. Montresor also says that Fortunato has only one flaw, and...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Early on in "The Cask of Amontillado," Montresor tells of his plans to get revenge against Fortunato for unspecified insults. Montresor knew Fortunato's biggest weaknesses, his love and knowledge...
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The Cask of Amontillado
The stones and mortar were outside the niche in which Fortunato was chained. They were both concealed under a pile of human bones, as Montresor states. I busied myself among the pile of bones of...
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The Cask of Amontillado
We do not actually know, with any certainty, what crimes Fortunato has committed against Montresor. In the first line of the story, Montresor claims that Fortunato has injured him a "thousand"...
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The Cask of Amontillado
In the first two paragraphs of "The Cask of Amontillado," readers learn that Montresor feels that he has been treated poorly by Fortunato a "thousand" times, but that something else has recently...
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The Cask of Amontillado
It is mostly Fortunato's pride and arrogance that renders him vulnerable to Montresor's plans. Montresor knows that Fortunato will not be able to resist the implication that Luchesi is as good a...
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The Cask of Amontillado
It is apparent that Montresor feels revenge is justifiable when insults and injuries go beyond the pale [outside the boundaries of normal behavior]. Poe's unreliable narrator explains to his...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor re-echos and surpasses his victim's desperate cries for help in order to show Fortunato that his cries are useless. By doubling the volume of the noise being made, Montresor demonstrates...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Montresor is an especially effective enemy of Fortunato for a few reasons, not the least of which are his intense pride and ability to manipulate. As he says early on, "I must not only punish but...
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The Cask of Amontillado
No, Montresor does not make his plans for Fortunato totally explicit before they descend into his family's vaults. He plans, of course, to murder Fortunato by walling him up alive near the bodies...
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The Cask of Amontillado
When Fortunato exclaims, "'Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible!'" Montresor seems to admit to Fortunato that he also has some doubts about whether or not the pipe of Amontillado he claims to have...
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The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Cast of Amontillado," is the story of Montresor's revenge against Fortunato. It is clear from the text that Fortunato and Montresor have a history together, and...
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The Cask of Amontillado
1) Write a few sentences from the point of view of Fortunato or of the listener. From the listener's perspective, Montresor's narrative is engaging and disturbing at once. Montresor begins by...
