this applies more to Montresor's own soul than it does to Fortunato's. By avenging his suffered injuries, Montresor's soul has seemingly been at peace ever since. He believed that Fortunato deserved to die, and he accomplished exactly what he carefully planned to do. The fact that he has hidden his crime for fifty years and has not been questioned for Fortunato's disappearance shows that this was a well-executed crime and one that he has carefully hidden for five decades. Montresor is proud of his success and shows no remorse for his actions; he simply wants his audience to know that he's gotten away with this crime for many years.

Monstresor is not confessing, but rather telling a story. The story may be true or it may be false. The simple fact is we just don't know. But if it is true, then one can understand why Montresor would wait so long to tell it. Committing such a brutal murder isn't exactly something you'd shout from the rooftops.

Fifty years is a long time, but perhaps it's only now that Montresor feels able to articulate exactly what supposedly happened all those years ago. If Montresor really is guilty of this appalling crime, then we can be sure that he's confident of escaping punishment for his actions. That tells us that, for some reason or another, something always prevented him from telling his story, some situation or other that would've made it impossible for him to set out in such lurid detail the precise events of that fateful day. Now that situation has changed, and Montresor is finally able to tell his tale.

Montresor is not confessing but writing a description of an event in his life of which he seems to be proud. The fact that he has waited fifty years to tell anyone about it only is intended to demonstrate that he has gotten away with a perfect crime. Many people express doubt that he really received any injuries or insults from Fortunato. These same people often believe that Montresor is making a verbal confession to a priest and seeking forgiveness for his sin. They call Montresor an "unreliable narrator." If so, then nothing in the story can be believed. Maybe he didn't even kill Fortunato. But if he didn't, then why is he confessing to it? Maybe Montresor is making up the entire story. But it is Edgar Allan Poe who made up the story, isn't it? Did Poe make up a story about a man who made up a story about an event that didn't actually happen? Why not read the story the way it is written? Why not assume that Fortunato injured Montresor approximately a thousand times and then ventured on insult? If we question Montresor, we can end up questioning every story written in the first person, including Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick and The Catcher in the Rye.

Montressor does not actually confess to the crime he has committed and we the reader do not even know if the story he tells is true because he is not a reliable character or he is not credible. He is so distraught with his feelings of vengeance and a desire for revenge that we do not know for certain that he actually went through with it. The narrator only tells us that for half a century the "rampart of bones " went undisturbed. He never says for certain that the reason they were disturbed half a century later was because he confessed. Furthermore, if Fortunato was buried alive he was buried in the catacombs which were actually the tombs of the family of the house so discovering a body among a mass tomb would not be suspicious.

Montresor was very specific in the beginning to explain that Fortunato had "wronged him" and deserved punishment.  However, in order for that punishment to be fair and just to the insults hurled upon Montresor, it had to be done secretly  This secret, as Montresor says, is "not only punish, but punish with impunity''; that is, to punish Fortunato without being caught or punished himself.  Therefore, he can not confess to the crime.  We can assume that this confession is being done towards the very end of his life, perhaps even on his deathbed, when not punishment could be exacted upon him.

In addition, Montresor is an unreliable narrator.  He is obsessed with injuries that he does not even describe in detail, suggesting perhaps that those injuries were not as damaging as his violent act suggests.  The lack of remorse he shows 50 years later, coupled with the passioned explanation of his actions that he makes, help to support the idea that this is an unstable man run amuck with perceived insults, and not a sane man dealing out deserved punishment.

Montresor is not a real person but an illusion, the creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe has Montresor state that no one has found Fortunato''s remains in the past fifty years because Poe wanted the reader to feel assured that Montresor had committed his perfect crime with the "impunity" which was important to his perfect revenge.

I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

I think we can assume that Montresor waited a half-century to mention his crime to anyone, even his close friend, because he wanted to be absolutely certain that he had been completely successful in murdering Fortunato and concealing the body. Montresor would have to be very old by the time he wrote his letter, and presumably he wanted to share his satisfaction with someone before he died. Some readers believe he wanted to confess a sin, but the overall story seems like someone bragging about a victory over an enemy, not someone who is feeling remorse. 

RE:  "The Cask of Amontillado"

Certainly, readers must wonder why Montresor has waited fifty years to reveal his revenge upon Fortunato, and they must also question the "thousand injuries" that he mentions he has suffered in the exposition of the story. Apparently, then, this narrator is prone to hyperbole, and readers, therefore, must presume that this narrator/character, who gives no specificity about the insults, is unreliable. 

Perhaps, also, in this tale replete with double-meanings,his confession is given only because Montresor approaches death; moreover, he may have saved it for his assumed death-bed for the dramatic effect that he seems to love since this penchant for boasting and crescendo is evinced in the beginning as well as in other parts of his narrative--

"The niter! I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisutre trickle among the bones...."--

Therefore, this narrator of the effusive nature of Latins, may well be embellishing his confession so that his act will become legendary. Certainly, his coat of arms as well as his name (and names are always significant in literary works), a combination of two French words [Mont=mountain and tresor= treasure], suggest pretensions of grandeur.

The narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe is Montresor, and he has waited fifty years to confess his crime. He is telling the story to one, he says, who

so well know[s] the nature of my soul. 

Of course this reference to his soul suggests that he is confessing to a priest, presumably at the end of his life when he knows he is dying. 

Long ago he vowed to exact revenge against Fortunato, and his family motto suggests that no one will be allowed to hurt him without consequences. It is translated as:

“No one harms me with impunity.”

Although he did kill Fortunato, it is clear that Montresor was not unscathed by the incident because he feels the need to officially confess his deed to a priest. That suggests that Fortunato won, as he caused Montresor to feel guilty, despite his claims to the contrary, for most of his lifetime. In a sense, Fortunato unknowingly defeated Montresor.

The title of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birthmark" is apt, as the primary focus of the story is the hand-shaped birthmark on Georgiana's beautiful cheek. In fact, everything about Georgiana is beautiful except perhaps this one blemish. 

Hawthorne makes it clear to us that this birthmark is a symbol of human mortality. He tells us:

The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death. 

The narrator claims that everything that lives is flawed in some way, and this serves as a reminder that every living thing will eventually die.

Georgiana is perfect in nearly every way, but she does have this one flaw. Obviously the theme is that even perfect human beings are flawed because they are mortal. The two things are intertwined.

Her husband, Aylmer, loves Georgiana very much, yet he is almost violently repulsed by that birthmark. This revulsion against her birthmark is also an indicator of his horror at the thought of mortality (death). In fact, he is a scientist who is “proficient in every branch of natural philosophy.” Because of his studies in which he manipulates and tries to control nature, he believes he can somehow make her immortal by removing the birthmark from this otherwise perfect woman. 

He is, however, mistaken. He believes that if he can root out this symbol of her mortality (her humanness), he will then possess the power to create immortality--or at least prolong life for an undefined period of time. 

Another error Aylmer makes is that he is convinced that the birthmark also represents all of Georgiana's sins, despite the fact that she has displayed nothing but good, even highly spiritual, characteristics throughout the story. 

This is one of Hawthorne's primary themes in this story. Remember that Georgiana's birthmark is in the shape of a human hand, which reinforces the connection between every human's mortality and humanity. Aylmer does get rid of the the blemish, making his wife even more beautiful and perfect. In doing so, however, he also kills her.

Imperfection is part of being human, as is our mortality. The birthmark in this story reminds us of this inescapable fact.