What examples from "The Cask of Amontillado" illustrate Poe's eerie, suspenseful mood?

One of the ways Poe builds this eerie mood is through crafting an unreliable narrator. We are told in the opening sentence that our narrator has withstood a "thousand injuries of Fortunato," yet we never do find out how Fortunato has managed to push Montresor to murder. The fact that there is no evidence that Fortunato was in the least deserving of this death makes us wonder whether our narrator is sane. Should we believe this story?

The sense of suspense builds when Montresor plays to Fortunato's weakness of pride and lures him directly in the trap he has laid. Fortunato "prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine," and Montresor tells him that he has "received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado," but that he doubts its authenticity. As expected, Fortunato cannot help himself and basically begs to go with Montresor to inspect it, walking right into the tomb of his death.

Montresor convinces Fortunato to continue into the catacombs through even more flattery. He tells Fortunato that they must go back because the man is "rich, respected, admired, beloved...a man to be missed." Montresor thereby deepens Fortunato's trust by telling the man all the things he wants to hear. When Fortunato asks what his family's motto is, Montresor replies, "Nemo me impune lacessit," which loosely translates as "No one can harm me unpunished."

Perhaps the eeriest and most troubling aspect of the plot is that Fortunato blindly trusts the wrong person and dies a horrible death because of it. His character flaw of pride is realized by his enemy and then manipulated to his final demise—and all for untold "injuries."

What examples from "The Cask of Amontillado" illustrate Poe's eerie, suspenseful mood?

Poe is a master at using imagery—description employing any of the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell—to create a mood. He does this as he describes the catacombs.

Because we have long been a visual culture, most writers rely on images we can see in our mind's eye, so I will first focus on Poe's more unusual use of sound imagery in this story. Near the end, as the chained Fortunato realizes he is being bricked into a crevice in the catacombs to die, he starts to scream. Montresor joins him, and their screams compete until Montresor's overcome Fortunato's. Fortunato then grows silent. Poe describes it this way:

A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. ... I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew still.

There is something particularly eerie about the loud, competing screams echoing over and over in the chilly catacombs—and something even more eerie about Fortunato's sudden silence. It seems it would terrifying to stumble by accident into the catacombs and hear those shrieks, and terrifying to hear them suddenly stop.

Other eerie touches include the black silk mask Montresor wears, which hides his face just as his flattering words hide his intentions.

The dark, narrow passages of the bone-littered catacombs with damp walls, lit only by Montresor's flaming torch, are also eery, and lead us to wonder what will happen in that isolated setting.

We then not only see but feel the cold and damp as Montresor stops, takes Fortunato's arm, and describes the scene before them, especially the nitre on the walls:

It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river’s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones.

The above too is an eerie image that might lead us to think Fortunato would do well to take Montresor's advice and head out of the catacombs.

What examples from "The Cask of Amontillado" illustrate Poe's eerie, suspenseful mood?

Mood is a literary tool that authors use to evoke feelings in readers. It is often confused with tone; however, tone refers to the author's attitude and feelings toward a subject. Mood is sometimes referred to as atmosphere and is influenced by setting, theme, and even tone.

You are correct that Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" is eerie and suspenseful. Poe is able to craft that mood right from the very first paragraph. Poe has Montresor tell readers that he is planning revenge, so right from the start we know that a tense confrontation is going to happen soon after.

From that point forward, I would say that the majority of the mood is carried by the story's setting. Once Montresor sets his plan into motion, the story is set at night. Bad, scary, and creepy things come out and happen at night. Next, Poe lets readers know that Montresor's home is oddly empty. There are no attendants at home, and Montresor specifically made sure that they would not return until the next day. The setting continues to get scarier because Montresor doesn't have the amontillado on a shelf in the main house. The fine wine is deep in the catacombs. They are dark, damp, and often used as burial chambers. Nothing about catacombs says fun, lighthearted, or festive. They are dark and eerie places, and the suspense is built up by not knowing Montresor's plan and being forced to follow him down a dark passage.

Identify three images that create an eerie mood in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado."

Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the macabre, was gifted in producing a sense of fear, death and looming insanity with the main characters is some of his best short stories, including "The Black Cat," "The Tell-tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado" (which was actually based on a true story that Poe learned about while in the military). These details were highly effective in creating a mood of eeriness.

Imagery is a form of figurative language, where details are provided to create a picture, or "image" in the reader's mind. Poe's stories are particularly effective because of the vivid imagery that he employs.

One bit of imagery that becomes more effective as the story progresses (in the form of foreshadowing) uses sensory details: in this case, auditory details. Onomatopoeia is also present with the word "jingle." Here, the narrator speaks of Fortunato as they move underground, heading (allegedly) for the coveted "amontillado."

The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.

This image becomes even more eerie at the end when the following lines are delivered:

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells.

In this second image, the narrator draws attention to the mineral deposits that are on the walls around them. Notice the word "web-work," alluding to a spider luring its prey, and the description of Fortunato's eyes that almost seem to describe a zombie, the undead or a monster of the deep:

"The pipe?" said he.

"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern walls."

He turned toward me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.

(Note - rheum: a thin discharge of the mucous membranes, especially during a cold.)

Another image is found several paragraphs later (once again including the bells) as Fortunato is recovering from a coughing fit. The narrator opens a bottle of Medoc (which is a kind of wine). Beside the bells ringing on his cap, note the leer on Fortunato's face, coupled with his toast to the dead around him—more foreshadowing.

"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.

"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."

If that is not creepy enough, there is more foreshadowing, and a hidden threat, in the narrator's response:

And I to your long life.

In this instance, the leer of the drunken Fortunato and his reference to the bodies buried in the catacombs around them provides another example as to how effortlessly Poe seems to use few words to create a sense of danger, suspense and impending doom.

What three elements create suspense or horror in "The Cask of Amontillado"?

The foreshadowing in the first two paragraphs helps to create suspense. Montresor says that he "vowed revenge" on Fortunato, and he explains his criteria for how this must be achieved. He says, "I must not only punish, but punish with impunity [....]. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation." Thus, we know that Montresor is going to do something horrible—something absolutely destructive—to Fortunato, as he refers to his enemy's "immolation." We also learn that Fortunato has no clue that he is in such grave danger, and we must wait to find out what horrors Montresor is going to unleash on his nemesis.

The revelation of Montresor's manipulative and cunning character also creates some horror. We learn that he is absolutely capable, intellectually and emotionally, to achieve the revenge he seeks. He tells us that his servants were all away from home: "I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned." Montresor knows just how to fix things without arousing suspicion in his household. He also deflects suspicion from anyone who sees them together outside by wearing a black mask and a long black cape to disguise his identity.

Moreover, Montresor describes the nitre that clings to the walls in his vaults, calling it "'the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls.'" Such a metaphor seems to compare the nitre to a spider's web, which makes Montresor, himself, the spider. This metaphor creates horror, indeed, because we imagine Montresor as a terrible predator and even begin to feel a little bit sorry for Fortunato, the prey who has absolutely no idea what's coming.

Name one detail in "The Cask of Amontillado" that creates suspense or horror.

Practically everything that Poe writes in "The Cask of Amontillado" is concerned with creating an atmosphere of suspense. One such example is the way he contrasts the bright fun of the carnival with the gradual darkness that Montresor and Fortunato descend into as they go deeper and deeper into the catacombs. The darkness of the atmosphere reflects the increasingly dark mood of the story as Fortunato is brought nearer to his doom.

Yet it all began so brightly! The carnival is a time of joy and celebration, when people get together to have fun and enjoy themselves. Fortunato has entered into the spirit of things, dressing up in a jester's costume and getting more than a little tipsy. As a master storyteller, Poe realizes that it's always more effective to start off bright and go dark, instead of diving straight into the darkness. Such an approach gives the writer more time to develop the story, building up an appropriate mood of suspense, so that we as readers are as suckered into Montresor's dastardly trap as much as the hapless Fortunato.

Poe is famous for spooky settings in his stories of terror or the supernatural. What are some examples of sensory details he uses to create a highly eerie underground scene?

When an author uses "sensory details," he is using the five senses - sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste - to give the reader a detailed and imaginative view of a scene.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," Poe wants the reader to sense how dark, damp, and creepy the vaults are. He uses sight when he describes piles of bones at the entrance to the catacombs.

Poe uses touch when Montresor asks Fortunato to touch the wall to feel the "niter" or the calcium buildup from the damp on the walls, saying "It is very damp."

Poe uses smell when he describes "the foulness of the air."

Poe uses sound when he describes "a succession of loud and shrill screams," as Montresor begins to bury Fortunato. 

Finally, Poe uses taste when he describes the warmth of the Medoc wine he drinks with Fortunato as they walk.

How do details in "The Cask of Amontillado" evoke the idea of death?

The most obvious detail in this regard would be the human bones stored in the crypt where Montresor carries out his terrible revenge on Fortunato. There's a large pile of them on the ground, and their displacement has exposed an interior recess in one of the crypt's walls. Fortunato and Montresor will enter that recess, but only one of them will come out alive. It will become Fortunato's final resting place.

The crypt itself, a place for burying dead bodies, couldn't be a more appropriate environment for the acting out of Montresor's wicked revenge fantasies. Its dark, cavernous recesses are the ideal place to commit a murder and make sure that no one ever knows about it. Once Montresor has finished sealing-up Fortunato inside the recess he piles up the old rampart of bones against the wall. And for fifty years they've remained undisturbed. It is Montresor's dearest wish that they will continue to rest in peace.