The Cask of Amontillado
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"The Cask of Amontillado" is a horror short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story is about revenge and is set in Italy during the 19th century.
Summary
"The Cask of Amontillado" is set during the carnival season in 19th century Italy, in an ancient city of palazzi, and particularly in the secret vaults and catacombs below the narrator's home. The unreliable first person narrator, Montresor, bears a grudge — the reader never learns exactly why — against one of his "friends", ironically called Fortunato, and takes revenge on him. Montresor finds his friend inebriated, and dressed in carnival costume at dusk.
Montresor cleverly induces Fortunato to follow him into the catacombs to determine if his newly-acquired cask of amontillado — a kind of Spanish sherry — is indeed authentic, and thus worth the price paid. They walk and talk, discussing Fortunato's health, the Montresor family motto (Nemo me impune lacessit — "No-one insults me with impunity"), and membership of the Freemasons (with double meaning). The ominous atmosphere increases as they continue to the damp, nitrous air of the Montresor crypt.
Dumbfounded at the absence of the amontillado at the end of their passage, Fortunato stands "stupidly bewildered" and Montresor takes advantage of the situation, suddenly chaining Fortunato to the wall in a small alcove roughly the size of a coffin. Montresor proceeds to seal the doorway with bricks as Fortunato slowly regains his sobriety and starts to plead in desperation. During the processing of entombing Fortunato alive (a recurring and symbolic theme in Poe's works), Montresor ironically taunts him with his freedom, but in the end walls him up completely and leaves him, concluding his story with an exclamation in Latin "In pace requiescat!" ("Rest in peace!")
Analysis
The story's theme is about revenge, and the human conscience. Montresor knows, in order to take revenge on Fortunato, that he must be sure the latter knows what it is for (while we do not know what it was that Fortunato did). This need for revenge is what Montresor used to carry out his deed. Several times Montresor hesitates, but quickly reassures himself that he is right.
There are also several instances of irony and dark humor in the story.
The story is part of the war of the literati in which Poe wants to intimidate his enemies in the field of literature. Fortunato represents Thomas Dunn English, a contemporary writer of Poe who insulted him several times ("The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne...") and Luchresi (in proper Italian spelling "Look crazy") represents Hiram Fuller, editor of the Evening Mirror, New York. Template:Wikisource
Profitable comparisons can be made with James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat" (New Yorker, Nov 11 1942) and, especially, Stephen King's "Dolan's Cadillac" (from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Futura, 1993), which is more or less a modern version of the same story.
External link
- The Cask of Amontillado (http://www.amlit.com/twentyss/chap5.html) at American Literature (http://www.amlit.com/)
- Free-to-download MP3 dramatisation of the story (http://www.irasov.com/Amontillado.htm) (Yuri Rasovsky)