illustration of Fortunato standing in motley behind a mostly completed brick wall with a skull superimposed on the wall where his face should be

The Cask of Amontillado

by Edgar Allan Poe

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Student Question

How does Fortunato's unknown offense against Montresor intensify the story's horror?

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The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. Poe did not have to explain what these injuries were because he was only pretending to be a translator and editor, not the actual author. We can speculate on what they were, based on the third paragraph in Poe's story. Poe used this device to spare himself the obligation of explaining why Montresor put up with Fortunato's insults for so long. The fact that we don't know exactly what Fortunato did or said wrong does not add to the horror of this story, since we understand why Montresor couldn't simply break off relations with his enemy.

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The one sentence in "The Cask of Amontillado" that has troubled critics more than all the others put together is the following:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.

Why would Montresor put up with a thousand injuries, since he is obviously a proud man? Why wouldn't he at least stay away from Fortunato and not give him any further opportunities to injure or insult him?

Why doesn't Montresor give at least a few examples of the injuries he received?

Was Montresor really injured? Or was he only imagining it?

If the injuries were only imagined, does this mean that Montresor is insane?

If Montresor is insane, then he is an unreliable narrator. And if he is an unreliable narrator, how can we believe in anything he says in his narrative? How can we...

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even believe that he killed Fortunato? How can we believe there ever was a person named Fortunato?

Poe used a literary device that spared him the need to explain many things. Evidently Montresor is writing to someone he has known for decades and someone who already knows nearly everything about him. Montresor doesn't even need to explain where the incident took place, his confidante knows exactly where he lives. His confidante probably has already heard about many of the "thousand injuries" Montresor has suffered, and this unidentified person also understand why Montresor didn't simply break off relations with Fortunato long ago. Poe doesn't have to explain many things because he is pretending to be only a translator and editor, and not the author of the original document.

Poe specified that Montresor had suffered a thousand injuries because he wanted to justify Montresor's powerful motivation to commit such a horrible crime. But since Montresor is writing to someone who knows all his secrets, Poe does not have to give any examples of those injuries. (This is one of the many strokes of genius in Poe's story.)

Not knowing what Fortunato has done to deserve such punishment does not intensify the horror of the story. We have to feel convinced that he actually did commit approximately a thousand injuries, whether or not we know what they were.

We have to guess what those injuries might have been. The best guess would be based on the third paragraph in Poe's story, which suggests that Montresor and Fortunato are gentlemen-businessmen who deal in luxury merchandise, including gourmet wines, and who act as brokers in the sale of jewelry, paintings, antiques, and even houses for impecunious Venetian aristocrats. The thousand injuries were probably incidents in which Fortunato beat Montresor out of profitable deals. Montresor expects his friendly enemy to tell him his (nonexistent) Amontillado is only ordinary sherry and then make haste to find and buy up the entire cargo while it is still a "bargain." Montresor has had to remain "friends" with his enemy because he is financially dependent upon him for commissions, ad hoc partnerships, finders fees, and possibly even direct cash loans.

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The most troubling lines of "The Cask of Amontillado" do not describe how Fortunato dies but fail to describe what Fortunato has done to Montresor:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.

From the story's first sentence to the last, the reader is left to wonder what "insult" could have been so hurtful as to cause Montresor to create such a horrific punishment for Fortunato.

The horror of this story lies not only in Fortunato's punishment but also in the unknown cause of his punishment.  Under normal circumstances, we judge a person's actions in part on the basis of the cause of those actions.  Without knowing the cause, we are left in a kind of moral limbo--we can't assign blame to either Montresor or Fortunato because we never know what Fortunato has done, and without knowing that, we cannot decide whether Montresor is reacting appropriately (assuming murder is appropriate to any situation) or is, to put it bluntly, crazy.  Fortunato's guilt can never be measured because we don't know what to measure.  We can conclude, based on the narrative, that Fortunato is an arrogant, prideful man, but those attributes don't seem sufficiently bad to justify murder.  We can also conclude that Montresor is a vengeful murderer, but we can't judge him on a moral basis because we are missing the cause of his hatred.

The horror of Fortunato's death, and the logical, methodical way Montresor has arranged it, is compounded  by the fact that we can never understand Montresor's motivation, and motivation is key to rendering a moral judgment on someone's actions.  We are left, as all readers have been, horrified by a truly inexplicable revenge, and that leaves us in a moral vacuum--a horrible place to be. 

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How does not knowing Fortunato's offense against Montresor intensify the suspense?

Montresor, the unreliable narrator, begins the story by basically saying that he's had enough of Fortunato's insults; yet he never says what they were. Throughout the narrative he occasionally refers back to these insults as justification not only for his actions but at the pleasure he takes in them, but the insults themselves are never revealed to us. It does seem clear, from Fortunato's reaction once he realizes what Montresor is doing, that he doesn't understand why this is being done, which casts further doubt on Montresor's place and begs the question of just what could have been so bad as to justify burying Fortunato alive.

By not revealing the nature of the insults, we are denied the chance at anticipating Montresor's revenge, and of judging the merits of it. Had the story begun by saying what Fortunato's crimes were, we might disagree that they were worthy of vengeance, and thus we would see Montresor as an emotionally unstable psychopath. If we agreed that Fortunato was deserving of punishment, then the story becomes one of simple violence being played out, without the suspense. We might also anticipate, based on the nature of his crimes, what sort of punishment Montresor might have in store, and then argue with ourselves whether the semantics of the revenge matched those of the insult. 

So, the lack of explanation or justification allows us to bring our attention fully on the emotional experience that Montresor is sharing, and it may allow us to more fully understand both characters without the impediment of judgment upon their actions.

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