serious crime. However, Poe heightens the suspense by depicting Montresor as anunreliablenarrator. The reader cannot fully believe everything Montresor says and his continual use of verbalirony builds suspense throughout the story. When Fortunato says, "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough," Montresor replies by saying, "True—true" (Poe, 6). Poe also utilizes situationalirony to heighten the suspense. The entire time Fortunato believes that he is racing towards the rare Amontillado wine, he is actually heading towards his death. The reader also questions the "thousand injuries" levied against Montresor by Fortunato, and the lack of an omniscient description creates a sense of mystery surrounding the two character's relationship. Poe also utilizes symbolism to create suspense, which is illustrated by Montresor's description of his family's coat of arms. The serpent biting the foot in the azure field represents Montresor's plot to get revenge. Overall, Poe's writing style, unreliable narrator, and use of irony and symbolism build suspense throughout the short story.

Poe begins the story with a "hook," something that grabs the reader's attention. He notes the thousand injuries and the insult that made him determined to seek revenge. The reader is hooked in a moment of suspense, wondering what the insult might have been and how Montresor will attempt to employ his revenge. 

Fortunato's namely sounds and looks quite similar to "fortunate." Poe creates suspense by suggesting that he is going to be fortunate in the end, or that his name is ironic and that he will come to an unfortunate end. But, again, just as Poe does with Montresor's mention of the insult, it is the withholding of information that heightens the suspense. Is Fortunato's name suggestive of some final good luck in the end or is it meant to be ironic? 

As they descend into the vaults, Fortunato asks Montrestor about his family's coat of arms. Montresor replies that it is of a foot crushing a serpent whose fangs are embedded in the heel. The motto is nemo me impune lacessit. This means " no one can harm me unpunished." Even if the reader doesn't get the Latin motto, the image Montresor describes foreshadows what he will metaphorically do to Fortunato. Fortunato is the serpent and his fangs are the alleged insult. Montresor metaphorically crushes Fortunato with his heel; this represents his revenge. 

Edgar Allan Poe's magnificently constructed, but disturbing, tale contains a perplexing mixture of elements that generate the suspense as well as the terror. Oddly enough, from the beginning of the story, the reader is aware of Montresor's revenge since in the frame story he informs his readers that he has "punish[ed] with impunity" his enemy who has wronged him through "a thousand injuries."  This is repeated when he says that, after making his revenge plan, he continued to "smile in" Fortunato's face, as was his custom, but that his "smile was now at the thought of his" sacrificial burial, a sacrifice to the wrongs done by him to Montresor.  Yet the suspense mounts until it terminates in a horror for which the reader has not been prepared.

Here are some of the devices that Poe utilizes to create and heighten the suspense in "The Cask of Amontillado":

• Unreliable Narrator

In his introduction to the tale of his revenge, Montresor contends that he has suffered a "thousand injuries," but fails to clarify this claim. He also states that the punisher must not be caught and he must let his victim become aware that he is avenging himself.  These statements in the frame story generate curiosity in the reader as to how revenge has been accomplished.  Then, as one critic has remarked, Poe creates a "red herring" with the cask of Amontillado as the lure to get Fortunato into the catacombs. 

In addition, with his narrator, Poe employs the technique that he called arabesque, a fancifully combined pattern of returning to the initial disturbing idea.  That is, Montresor feigns concern for Fortunato's health repeatedly, saying that they should turn back, the niter is bad for Fortunato, etc. all the time luring Fortunato deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the catacombs, which become increasingly narrower and more covered with niter.

• Language

Poe's use of sexually connotative language is also disturbing.  The bones that "lay promiscuously upon the earth" are in the path of the area where Fortunato "endeavored to pry into the depth of the recess."  In a way, Montresor seduces Fortunato into the deep recess by means of his jesting with the trowel and playing upon the word mason. Then, when Fortunato finds his progress "arrested by the rock," he is bewildered. Montresor narrates,

"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.

When a series of screams are uttered from Fortunato, Montresor narrates,

Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess...I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied....

When it is midnight, Montresor places the last stone in position when there is emitted a low laugh from within "that erected the hairs upon my head." Stunned, then, Montesor says that he barely recognizes the voice as "that of the noble Fortunato."

• Symbols

Poe creates suspense with the introduction of the symbolic coat of arms and the trowel, which Montresor makes a pun with Fortunato on his being a Mason. [Freemasons vs. brick mason]

• Gothic Conventions

Certainly, the catacombs that are underground, with their maze of rooms that narrow with each turn, where bones

had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming a one point a mound of some size

create suspense and horror as the reader wonders why bones have been piled up.  Moreover, there is even greater wonderment and horror as Poe subverts these Gothic conventions by using human beings, rather than the supernatural, for the terrible deeds. Montresor screams himself at the end of the tale of his revenge.  For, the real terror is in the capacity for horror that the human mind possesses. Moreover, the motive for the murder of Fortunato is never revealed, indicating the disturbing madness of the narrator; he is the most grotesque of all the elements of the story in his sensually-charged murder, motivated solely by what has been in his mind.

Poe sets the suspenseful mood of the story by establishing the conflict in the story's first line, in which Montresor announces the reason he will exact revenge upon Fortunato, though Fortunato's "thousand injuries" and final insult are not made explicit. The outcome is never in doubt if the reader considers that the story is told in retrospect, with Montresor satisfied that he has achieved what he set out to do.

The story's setting also builds suspense. Since it is carnival time, all are in costume; this provides a reason for Montresor to be dressed not unlike a grim reaper and for the unsuspecting Fortunato to be in a clown's garb. As evening settles into night and the men descend deeper and deeper underground, suspense builds.

Poe utilizes a darkly humorous foreshadowing when Montresor claims to be a member of the Masonic order and then wittily pulls a trowel from his cloak. Additionally, the fact that Montresor's family crest is described with its symbolic and explicit motto, "No one harms me with impunity," bodes ominously for Fortunato.

Readers begin to recognize that Fortunato's increasingly drunken state will contribute to his undoing. With each draught of wine offered by Montresor, he inches closer to his doom.

Poe builds suspense starting with the first paragraph, in which he has his narrator tell us he will get revenge on Fortunato but doesn't tell us how or why. How has Fortunato wronged him? What will he do to him?

Suspense builds as we enter the cold, damp vaults beneath a home where all the servants are gone for the night. It grows as we enter, with the characters, a smaller crypt, "lined with human remains." We worry, for we know Fortunato is drunk, and now isolated from all help. The upside-down frame of the Carnival, a time when normal restraints are cast off, is a literary device which also adds to our sense of unease. 

The narrator chains Fortunato to a wall, but like the victim, we still don't know exactly what is going to happen: we are still in suspense. Then, rather than just telling us he has walled up Fortunato, he takes us through it step by step, as if in slow motion: "I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain."

The narrator continues to drag out the work of the walling, while revealing that nobody can hear the screams of Fortunato. But will the narrator actually go through with his plan, or is his revenge simply to play a cruel joke? We are in gradually lessening suspense until the last brick is mortared in place. 

We never learn what Fortunato has done, if even anything, to warrant this fate. But by using the technique of carrying the reader step by step through the grisly scene, we are kept in suspense as to its final outcome.

There never is any doubt that the narrator will exact a cruel revenge. The suspense lies not in the "if" of the revenge but in the specifics of "how" it will occur. 

Poe uses foreshadowing and irony masterfully as he begins to weave this tale of horror.  It takes place during the carnival season of an Italian community, where the revelers are in costume and enjoying generous amounts of wine and other libations.  Montresor wastes no time revealing himself as extremely narcissistic and sociopathic, explaining to the reader the reason for his murderous plans: he is simply redressing what he calls "the thousand injuries" visited upon him over time by Fortunato (whose name, ironically, is exactly the opposite of what is about to befall him).  As Montresor takes the inebriated Fortunato to the catacombs, he describes the dampness of the atmosphere, the bones strewn about, and the oppressive darkness as they venture deeper and deeper into the catacombs, thoughtfully justifying this venture deep into the earth as necessary because if one gets caught trying to extract revenge, then the act of revenge doesn't count.  The full extent of the horror of Fortunato's demise becomes apparent as Montresor chains Fortunato to heavy links he has cemented to the rock, and begins building a wall, brick by brick, as Fortunato slowly recovers from his drunken state and realizes what is happening.