Last year my students decided that Poe must have had direct experience as a murderer. Even if he didn't, he certainly had dark thoughts and wrote some dark stories. It is quite possible that he felt wronged, by someone in particular or society in general, and wanted revenge.
I'm with blazedale on this one. The best insights I've ever gotten on Poe's life and literary point of view come from a short poem he wrote called "Alone." In it, he writes:
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy...
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life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
He says he doesn't think like others do, nor does he see things in the positive. He sees demons where others see storm clouds. That about sums it up, I think.
I would imagine that Poe's personal story runs through everything he writes. I wonder if this story relates to some sort of feeling of being wronged, and is a revenge fantasy. We don't know enough about Poe's life to know if he had been wronged by someone and harbored some inner feelings of hatred for that person.
Perhaps the most telling sign of how Poe's "miserable life" resonates in "The Cask of Amontillado" comes in the form of Montressor's lack of feeling for his victim, Fortunado. After burning Fortunado alive, Montressor notes how he does not feel good but then attributes the feeling to the damp catacombs. With all the religious symbolism and by how Fortunado is chained in the form of Christ on the cross, Montressor clearly has an understanding of what is right and wrong according to Christian standards. Nonetheless, he never tries to temper his desire for revenge or feel badly about a truly horrible murder. To Montressor, and perhaps likewise as to Poe, the gruesome nature murder and the amoral practice of deceit is simply a part of reality.
I'm sure that Poe's unfortunate life had some kind of affect on his outlook. His mother died when he was two, his foster father disliked him, he married his cousin when she was 13 only to have her die of tuberculosis when she was 19. Poe's brother and mother had also died of the same disease. Poe does include references to that disease in "Masque of the Red Death",The Case of M. Valdemar" and others. Poe, himself, also suffered from some kind of alcoholism. However, it's important to remember the time period in which Poe wrote. He was writing when American Romanticism was at its height and horror stories were very popular. Poe needed to support both his wife and mother-in-law. Poe studied the market for fiction and learned that these types of stories earned money, something Poe desperately needed. As all writers, I'm sure he incorporated parts of his own life which he felt would make his stories more popular, but he also knew that these were the kinds of stories people wanted to read. Poe's first love was poetry but poets made little money so these horror stories were a way to help support his family.