In "The Cask of Amontillado," is the narrator reliable or unreliable, and why?

There is enough evidence to suggest that Montresor is certainly an unreliable narrator in Poe's classic short story "The Cask of Amontillado." In the opening paragraph of the short story, Montresor states that Fortunato had caused him a "thousand injuries" and "ventured upon insult," which apparently justify his motivation for seeking revenge. Montresor's reason for committing a horrific murder is vague, obscure, and ambiguous. He provides no solid evidence to support his decision, which is unsettling and problematic. If one were to even contemplate burying another person alive, there should certainly be legitimate evidence to even justify the thought of taking that person's life. However, Montresor simply glosses over Fortunato's "injuries" and assumes that his actions are warranted.

In addition to Montresor's vague reasoning for seeking revenge on Fortunato, the fact that Montresor commits murder is further evidence of his unreliability. One could argue that a sane, rational person would never bury another individual alive. Plotting and executing such a horrific crime suggests a degree of mental illness and instability. Another example of Montresor's unreliability takes place at the end of the story. Montresor thrusts his torch in the remaining aperture in the wall and lets it fall in hopes of getting a rise out of his enemy. However, Fortunato does not reply and all Montresor can hear is the jingling of bells. Montresor then mentions,

"My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs" (Poe, 10).

This statement is further evidence to suggest that Montresor is an unreliable narrator. The audience recognizes that his heart "grew sick" as a result of his guilty conscience and tortured soul. Somewhere in Montresor's heart, he regrets his actions and pities his enemy. However, Montresor would have the reader believe that the dampness of the catacombs was the reason his heart grew sick, which is an obvious lie. Overall, one could argue that Montresor is an unreliable narrator because he refuses to give specific reasons to justify his actions, commits a horrific crime, and attempts to conceal his true feelings regarding Fortunato's murder.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," is the narrator reliable or unreliable, and why?

While there is certainly evidence to suggest that Montresor is an unreliable narrator—he strongly dislikes Fortunato, he offers no evidence of the wrongs supposedly done him by Fortunato, and so on—I'm going to suggest that he is relatively reliable because of when he is telling the story and the possible circumstances under which he tells it. When he begins to narrate the events, he addresses his audience as one who "well know[s] the nature of [his] soul." It is reasonable to suggest that one who has intimate knowledge of another person's soul must be privy to the most personal kinds of knowledge; a priest who has heard someone's honest confessions would have just such a knowledge. At the very end of the story, Montresor says that it has been "half a century" since he killed Fortunato. He must be an old man by now, and he's kept the secret of this murder to himself for a very long time. What circumstances would compel him to confess it now? Why tell the story fifty years later? Because of his advanced age and the comment he made about his auditor's familiarity with his soul, I offer the idea that Montresor is confessing his sins to a priest while on his deathbed. It would make sense that he is seeking absolution for his sins before he dies, and if this is so then he would be telling the truth (at least, the truth from his perspective and memory). One does not lie in confession, as this defeats the purpose of confession! Thus, it is certainly possible to argue that he has reason to be reliable in his narration.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," is the narrator reliable or unreliable, and why?

The narrator in this story is a bit of a crazed, jealous, spiteful man who ends up bricking his friend behind a wall in order to ensure his death, and, he does it all with panache and enjoyment.  So, I wouldn't rely too heavily on him-he's not necessarily trustworthy.  The story is told from his point of view, so it is first-person, and, because of the things I listed above, he isn't a reliable narrator.  He might be relied on to have told the events of the actual story accurately as he can, but before the story occurs, we don't really get an objective picture.  For example, why is he so angry with Fortunado, and did poor Fortunado really deserve such cruelty?  The only clues that we get to these questions are Montresor's words himself.  He states,

"THE THOUSAND INJURIES of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge."

So, we can't say with any certainty that the narrator's reasons for revenge are justified.  We don't know the details, and can't make a judgment call for ourselves.  Hence, the narrator is a bit unreliable, since his entire mission is based around something that he deems worthy of revenge, without telling us what it is.  I hope that those thoughts help; for your other questions, I suggest submitting them separately, since the format of the website allows one question a day.  Good luck!

Who is the narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado"?

The narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" is Montresor, who claims to have suffered many times, greatly but quietly, at the hands of Fortunato. Finally, he resolves to seek revenge on Fortunato when he hears that Fortunato has laughed at his “proud name Montresor, the name of an old and honored family”.

Montresor, the narrator, then plots his revenge, which he intends to exact as secretly as possible so that nobody can trace it back to him. Knowing that Fortunato likes wine, he decides to use this against him. He invites Fortunato to his home one dark spring evening to taste a cask of wine that is supposedly amontillado. The visit is well planned so that none of the servants witness the occurrence. Also, Fortunato is quite drunk on the given day. Montresor walks Fortunato to the wine vaults that are situated beneath the walls of the palace and also house the tombs of the Montresor family. While they walk, Montresor offers Fortunato more bottles of wine to drink. Finally, towards the end of the vaults, he chains Fortunato to the walls and plasters him up. He buries Fortunato alive in the vaults under his palace, thereby exacting his revenge.

The character of the narrator comes through as cold, calculating, and vicious. He has no qualms about divulging the gory details of his revenge towards the end of the story. In fact, he appears to relish the wicked narration. This might mean that he thinks that he is justified in punishing Fortunato in this manner.

How would "The Cask of Amontillado" differ if Fortunato had narrated the story?

The story would have been very different if told from Fortunato’s perspective.  The main reason is that we have no idea what the motive for the murder is.  This is always one of the main things you want to know.  All we know is that there was some kind of vague and possibly imagined insult.

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat.

From this line we know that Montresor never threatened Fortunato, but we also know from the story that Fortunato never suspected he had done anything wrong.  Why would he go into the catacombs with Montresor if he thought his friend was angry at him?  If the story was told from Fortunato’s perspective, we may know what the injury was, or at least get confirmation that there wasn’t one.

 Also, if the story was told from Fortunato’s perspective we would know what he was thinking.  It really seems like he never suspected anything, until the last moment.  It wasn’t until he was bricked in the wall that he realized he was being murdered.

"Ha! ha! ha! --he! he! he! --a very good joke, indeed --an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo --he! he! he! --over our wine --he! he! he!"

Since we only have Montresor’s perspective, it might be interesting to know what Fortunato was thinking during this time.  At what point did he figure it out?  Was he playing along?  Was he just too drunk?  This story will be told by either a drunken man or a madman.  Either way, we will never get a straight answer on what went on.

How reliable is the narrator in "The Cask of Amontillado"? What does this suggest about their state of mind?

Well, the narrator is, to put it quite simply, mentally unbalanced, and certainly not operating with a full grip on reality.  Here he is, having planned this elaborate revenge, leading a costumed drunk guy down through the catacombs with the intention of chaining him to the rock and barricading him in with bricks, before leaving him to die, for some offense that has been yet unstated.  So there's two ways to look at this:  A)  either his heart actually feels "sick" because deep down he has a conscience and he's really sickened by what he's planning to do, in which case his conscience apparently isn't quite strong enough because he does it anyway, or B) the narrator's actually feeling ill in the damp atmosphere of the  catacombs, with no real thought about the impending murder, in which case he's even more of a cold-hearted killer than what might have been supposed.  This narrator does not qualify as being reliable or objective in any sense of the word; creating characters with "a screw loose" was one technique Poe used effectively in his horror stories, as these type of people are not constrained by logic or reason, which adds to the frightening tone. 

What is the point-of-view and reliability of the narrator in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"?

"The Cask of Amontillado" is told in the first-person point of view. We know this from the very first line, in which the narrator, Montresor, states the following:

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne . . .

The "I" is the give-away that this is the first-person point of view. Montresor is telling his own story in his own words, as he understands it.

Montresor is not a reliable narrator. He is far too close to his subject and wants to justify the horrible murder of Fortunato he committed fifty years before. We can't expect him to provide an accurate or objective recital of events.

Evidence of Montresor's unreliability is the vagueness of his motivation for a particularly cruel form of murder. All he says is that he had, as noted in the quoted line above, borne a "thousand injuries," but he doesn't state what these were. At no point does he describe anything Fortunato has done that would warrant walling him up to die. At worst, Fortunato, from what we can gather, has been snobbish and superior toward him, but if that were a reason for walling a person up, the world itself would be walled up with bodies.

Who (if anyone) is the narrator (Montresor) talking to at the end of "The Cask of Amontillado"?

We get a few clues as to whom the narrator, Montresor, is speaking to. In the first paragraph of the text, he says, "You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose [...] that I gave utterance to a threat." In other words, he believes that his auditor understands him. He believes that person to whom he is speaking knows his very soul, and this makes me think that he could be talking to a priest or minister (I lean toward priest since the story takes place in Italy, a very Catholic country).

Then, in the final paragraph, Montresor says that it has been "half a century" since he buried his nemesis, Fortunato, alive in the Montresor family vaults. If we can assume that he was in his twenties or thirties when he committed the murder, that would put him in his seventies or eighties now; he could very likely be on his death bed and making his final confession. Another piece of evidence to support this interpretation is the text's final line, "In pace requiescat!" This means rest in peace in Latin, another indicator of Catholicism, as Latin was the official language of the Catholic Church for many centuries. It could be that Montresor is telling Fortunato to rest in peace, or it could be that he is hoping he, himself, will be able to. If he has been carrying the sinful burden of his crime around for fifty years, it is possible that he has not been able to rest peacefully; but now, having confessed it, perhaps he hopes such peace will be possible. Still another possibility is that the person to whom Montresor is speaking, if it is a priest, would utter this line while giving Montresor his last rites in the church.

Although there are other possibilities, this interpretation— that Montresor is confessing to a priest on his deathbed—is my favorite because of these clues.

Who (if anyone) is the narrator (Montresor) talking to at the end of "The Cask of Amontillado"?

There are several possible answers to this. Some argue that he is writing his confession, rather than speaking it, and that it is addressed to whomever finds it. In this case, Montresor would not have a specific audience in mind. We already know he is an unreliable narrator, and this might be magnified if he didn't know the person to whom he was relating his story.

However, he does state that the one to whom he is speaking knows "the nature of [his] soul." Thus, it can be inferred that he is well-acquainted with his audience. If this is the perspective you wish to take, it would follow that Montresor either absolutely believes what he's saying, or that he needs his audience to believe that he was justified in his actions. Therefore, he intimates that the reader knows his soul, and brings us into his confidence, attempting to convince both us and himself of the righteousness of his actions.

How does the unreliable narrator affect "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 understand that Montresor believes he is justified in what he has done in walling up Fortunato.

However, rather than persuade us to be on his side, Montresor ends up horrifying us at what he does. The result is that we feel pity and sympathy for Fortunato. For example, Montresor is vague about what crime Fortunato has committed to deserve his fate. Montresor merely tells us he has suffered a thousand injuries and an insult from Fortunato. Could he really have suffered a "thousand" injuries? What were these? What insult could have been so terrible it warranted inflicting a slow death on his enemy?

Montresor also unwittingly builds our sympathy for Fortunato by describing him in his Mardi Gras cap with bells, mentioning his difficulties breathing in the moldy catacombs, showing him drunk on a party night, and revealing that he is utterly unsuspecting that Montresor will do anything more to him than offer a taste of wine. He does not fight Montresor or suddenly admit to having done Montresor some terrible wrong. We as readers end up as bewildered as Fortunato is when he is walled up. All these details reinforce our sense that Fortunato is the innocent victim of a madman who has blown a tiny incident into a reason for murder.

Who is the narrator talking to at the end of the story in "The Cask of Amontilado"?

There a several choices for who the narrator is talking to when he says, "Rest in Peace". Obviously, he is referring to Fortunato and may still be talking to him. But in the paragraph before his reference to 'rest in piece", Montresor makes a point to say "For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.' [ the stones covering the body of Fortunato]. This could be some kind of death bed confession or part of a manuscript to be read after Montresor's death. However, the it is simpler to say he is talking directly to the reader. He addresses the reader directly at the beginning of the story with the line, "You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave
utterance to a threat." Thus Montresor,is addressing the reader who might be thinking of reporting Montresor's crime by indicating how long it has been since his burial of Fortunato,

What evidence in "The Cask of Amontillado" suggests that Montresor is an unreliable narrator?

The question -- what is some evidence from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Cask of Amontillado that proves the narrator is unreliable -- is interesting insofar as there is nothing that suggests that the narration is unreliable, but much to suggest that the narrator, Montresor, is intrinsically duplicitous in his dealings with Fortunato. This is an important distinction. To suggest that Montresor is an unreliable narrator, one would need evidence of some sort that the story he relates is untrue, or fundamentally misleading with respect to the chain of events described. There is no indication, however, that Poe intended the reader to question the validity of his narrator's tale. On the contrary, Montresor is depicted as the quintessential homicidal sociopath, driven to this state, as he indicates in the story's introduction, by the "thousand" insults he has endured at the hands of Fortunato. Montresor's story, we must presume, is accurate. He has killed Fortunato, and by the means described. He is, however, duplicitous in his dealings with his intended victim, evident in the following passage:

"I gave Fortunato no cause to doubt me. I continued to smile in his face, and he did not understand that I was now smiling at the thought of what I planned for him, at the thought of my revenge. . .I acted pleased to see him, and I shook his hand, as if he had been my closest friend."

As the above passage indicates, Montresor is betraying Fortunato's trust as the key to achieving his objective of avenging the latter's repeated if unspecified insults. Indeed, Montresor is duplicitous by nature, anticipating the worst even in his own household staff, as when he describes the manner by which he ensured that that staff would be away when he brought Fortunato to his home:

"I had told the servants that they must not leave the palace, as I would not return until the following morning and they must care for the place. This, I knew, was enough to make it certain that they would all leave as soon as my back was turned."

Montresor is not unreliable as a narrator; he is unreliable as a friend, and there is a difference. The reader must presume that the narration is accurate, as the murderer is confessing his sin without remorse, and in a manner that leaves one to accept the tale as told.

What type of narrator is used in "The Cask of Amontillado"?

In his story “The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allan Poe uses a first-person narrator and allows Montresor to tell his own story. In this way, we enter into Montresor's crazed mind and experience the horror of what he does to Fortunato through his own eyes.

Montresor has a grudge and a plan. He has long suffered the injuries Fortunato has heaped upon him, but when Fortunato insults him in some way, Montresor decides that the time for revenge has come. Notice that Montresor never tells us the nature of these injuries or insults. Perhaps they are real. Perhaps they are only in his mind. We do not know. Montresor does not choose to tell us, and maybe it makes no difference, for Montresor is now focused on his revenge.

Montresor, as narrator, takes us through his philosophy of retribution, his plan to trap Fortunato, and the actual steps by which he leads Fortunato into the catacombs, chains him, bricks up the entrance, and leaves him there to die.

At the end of the story, Montresor tells us that he is looking back upon these events from a great distance. A half of a century has passed since Fortunato has been walled up, and it seems that Montresor has not lost one bit of the satisfaction of his vengeance nor experienced much in the way of remorse, at least not that he is willing to admit to himself.

Is the narrator a character and a participant in "The Cask of Amontillado"?

The narrator of the story is definitely a man named Montresor who is the main character and the viewpoint character. Since the story was published with the byline of Edgar Allan Poe, it would seem--to me at least, if not to everybody--that the story is represented as a translation of an old manuscript that somehow came into Poe's possession. Ostensibly, Montresor wrote out this detailed confession with the intention of giving it, or mailing it, to someone whom he addresses in the story as "You, who so well know the nature of my soul..." The original manuscript may have been written in Italian or French, perhaps even in Latin. It may or may not have ever been received by the man or woman to whom it was directed. It is quite possible that Montresor, an very old man, might have written out the entire confession one night while intoxicated and put it away without mailing it or having it delivered. No one will ever know the identity of "You, who so well know the nature of my soul." My guess is that is was a woman. The manuscript might have been found among Montresor's papers after his death. Or it might have been found among the papers of the recipient, if it ever reached that person. In publishing it in English in Godey's Ladies' Book, Poe was implicitly conveying the idea that he somehow got hold of this old manuscript, translated it, and was now making it available to the public.

Poe liked to experiment with different ways of telling a story. In his "Ms. Found in a Bottle," he uses the fiction that he, Edgar Allan Poe, is publishing the manuscript of a journal found in a bottle thrown overboard while a ship was sinking (see reference link below). This is similar to the fictitious acquisition of Montresor's manuscript in "The Cask of Amontillado."

Montresor is undoubtedly dead by the time Poe publishes his confession, and Fortunato has been dead for over fifty years. The perfect crime has been committed because Montresor is out of reach. The concluding words of the story are:

Against the new masonry I reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.

In pace requiescat!

The words "In pace requiescat!" are not meant to be ironic or sardonic. Montresor is undoubtedly sincere in wishing Fortunato to rest in peace. Montresor explained his ideas of the perfect revenge in the opening of the story. The perfect revenge would have to provide perfect satisfaction of the hatred that prompted thoughts of revenge in the first place. Once Montresor has finished walling Fortunato up in the niche, he has cleansed himself of his long-pent-up feelings of hatred. He has achieved what is so often these days called "closure." So he no longer harbors any ill feelings for the dead man but feels well disposed towards the skeleton hanging in rusty chains. The words "In pace requiescat!" make a perfect ending for this story of revenge, because they prove that Montresor has accomplished his diabolical plot to his complete satisfaction.

Poe is the actual writer of the story, but his fictitious character Montresor is presented as the narrator, the protagonist, and the viewpoint character.

Who is the narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" and how would a different narrator change the story?

The narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" is a man named Montresor. He is narrating the story many years after the events happened, probably as a deathbed confession. At the time of the events narrated, he appears to be a member of a noble family which has declined in fortune and power, and he attributes some of this decline to Fortunato. While we can be sure that Montresor has some sort of grievance against Fortunato, we do not know the actual details nor, in fact, whether the grievance is entirely in Montresor's head.

Given the secrecy of Montresor's actions, there are really only two other potential choices of narrator, Fortunato and perhaps the priest listening to the confession who could tell this as a framed narrative. A framed narrative would have less immediate emotional impact and suspense but might give us a deeper understanding of the characters and situation. It would also be possible to tell the story from Fortunato's point of view and retain the horror and suspense, but the closure at the end would be complicated as Fortunato is left to die slowly; technically, this might need a third person limited narrator in order to end the story after Fortunato is walled up and mention his death. The first person point of view would not really provide an ending proportionate with the pacing of the rest of the story. 

Is the narrator in "The Cask of Amontillado" reliable? Why?

Montresor appears to have written a letter to a close friend whom he addresses as "You, who so well know the nature of my soul." In other words, he is not addressing a general audience. The story seems to be a letter found among some papers after the death of the recipient and translated into English by an editor named Edgar Allan Poe. Or it might be a letter written by Montresor one night when he was drunk and never posted because he thought better of it next morning. So there is no reason to think Montresor, the narrator, might be intentionally deceiving "You, who so well know the nature of my soul." It is possible, however, that he could be deceiving himself a little--but just a little. There is one point at which he seems to be denying that he has any feelings of guilt or pity for the terrible murder he is committing.

My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so.

This we do not believe. We think his heart grew sick because he had accomplished the perfect murder he had been envisioning for so long, and now he realized he was doing an unpardonable thing. He might have thought about how he would have to be punished for this sin in the afterlife.He might have thought about how he would have to keep this secret to himself for the rest of his life. He might have thought about how he would have to pretend to be just as concerned about Fortunato's disappearance as everybody else. But he suppresses such feelings and thoughts and deceives himself by attributing his sick heart to the dampness of the catacombs.  

Otherwise, it is not easy to detect any clues that show Montresor is an unreliable narrator. He is certainly unreliable in everything he tells his victim Fortunato, but he is not telling the story to his victim. As a matter of fact, he never makes the slightest attempt to tell Fortunato why he is doing what he is doing to him. Fortunato should have plenty of time to speculate about that before he dies of madness and starvation.