Barr 1 Kate Barr Angela F.

Jacobs ENC 1102 14 Apr 2014 Freudian analysis of The Cask of Amontillado with plot and characterization as aspects of Poe's psyche In The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe writes a short tale about revenge and hatred. In the tale Montresor discusses the live burial of Fortunato; an act that he committed due to an unknown offense he received. The characters and plot form a complex story of anger and revenge. The story has many Freudian aspects in it; the characters and their actions through the work reveal neuroses in the characters themselves, and according to Freud may also represent facets of the inner psyche of the author. This essay covers the characters and plot of The Cask of Amontillado and uses Freudian analysis of the work to analyze the elements and how they may represent Edgar Allan Poe's psyche. The two main characters in the Cask of Amontillado are Montresor, the narrator and the protagonist, and Fortunato, who is both the victim and the antagonist. Montresor is a very internalized character; if the tale was not being told by him you would have very little to go on for judging his demeanour or reasoning behind his actions. From the start of the short story Montresor is calculatedly planning revenge on Fortunato for unnamed insults and injuries. While it is unclear what the scope of the insults that provoked it is clear at least that Fortunato seems unaware of any enmity of Montresor and unsuspecting of his eventual fate or any acts he committed that make it deserved. This strong and forceful vengeance is seen in the motto of his family - Nemo me impune lacessit or no one provokes

Barr 2 me with impunity. Benton adds an historical context for Montresor's actions Montresor is the count of a french fiefdom; an old and respected member of high-class society(Benton). Fortunato on the other hand is seen in the story as more of a ambivalent and generally neutral character. Montresor claims that Fortunato was a man to be respected and even feared, but also paints him as a man who has a weakness for wine and is in many respects a quack. Benton addresses the status of Fortunato as well; describing him as a rich Italian who has bought status in France. Benton surmises that Montresor could not publicly bring Fortunato to task for his insults due to Fortunato's lack of knowledge of French social status putting him slightly below himself socially, but still having enough sway politically that it would be impossible to shame him as a better. The plot is a pretty linear tale of Montresor's revenge. In the tale Montresor beguiles Fortunato with claims of a cask of Amontillado, a famous wine, that he had recently purchased. The main body of the story has Montresor attempting to convince Fortunato to return back to the service; mentioning the possibility of illness and the fact that he does not wish to impose on Fortunato although Montresor knows that the allure of the Amontillado and Fortunato's demeanour will not let him return unfulfilled. Once they reach the bottom of the vaults, the end of their journey, Montresor fastens Fortunato against the wall and seals Fortunato into the damp vault; filling in the vault with mortar and stone and ignoring his pleas for mercy. Montresor can easily be viewed as suffering from psychosis from a Freudian (or any other) analysis. Freud's main view of human psyche and psychosis is focused on the relation between a person's id their primal lust and anger; their super-ego the moral part of the psyche; and their ego the mediator and controller of the id and ego. Montresor could be seen as having a very extreme id containing great anger over the unspecified insults and sleights that Fortunato committed; and acting

Barr 3 out these aggressions upon Fortunato without remorse. Bennet also claims that this imprisonment as a form of killing has a bondage aspect and hints that there may be some homoerotic imagery or intentions in Montresor. While he may not have sexual feelings towards Fortunato the combination of his anger with Fortunato combined with sexual repression from another source could put such a pull on the id that Fortunato is forced to act out; and that the bondage and torture aspects of Fortunato's death could be an erotic outlet for his inability to act out not only his primal revenge, but also acts of primal lust that society could be preventing him from expressing. Insofar as plot is concerned there are a few Freudian aspects as well. A major concept of Freud's dream and literary analysis is that elements of a dream or work frequently have sexual imagery in them that are a result of subconscious sexual repression. One huge example of this would be the tunnels or catacombs that Montresor and Fortunato travel through: while a lot of Freud's more famous sexual metaphors are of a phallic nature, this could definitely represent a vagina or an anus (linking back to Bennet's hint of possible homo-eroticism of the work); especially considering that the journey of Montresor is one that is considered taboo, although represented through a violent act instead of a sexual one (Freud may say that a violent action could be brought on by sexual repression), with the literal climax being at the bottom of the catacombs and Fortunato possibly being used as a sacrifice to sate desires both of anger and sex. In relation to Poe's other works D.H. Lawrence claims that most or all of Poe's works feature love (or lust) as a destructive force listing the Cask of Amontillado as one of the few works in his analysis that has violence rather than love as the overt force behind the horror of the work. Of course when Freud analyzes a work he would analyze it as a representation of Edgar Allan Poe's psyche that the story is little more than a more structured dream, with aspects that represent Poe's inner desires, possibly even ones he was not aware of. While there are no representations of Poe

Barr 4 as gay (except perhaps by those who claim that of every author from Shakespeare to Kafka) there is a biographical representation of Poe that may align with this work. Poe was well known to have a temper, and to be very aggressively dismissive to those who he felt were looking down upon him. Specifically it was well known that Poe had trouble with money, and that he also angrily refused monetary assistance from others out of pride(Wei-hsin). Especially with the victim of this work being one who is said to be representative of new money and having bought his way into high society(Benton) it makes a sort of sense that if Poe were to choose a choose a victim consciously or subconsciously it would be someone who has money and looks down on others.

Barr 5 Works Cited Bennett, Zachary Z. E. Killing the Aristocrats Edgar Allan Poe Review. 12.1 (2011):42-58. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Mar. 2014. Benton, Richard P. "The Cask of Amontillado: Overview." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. Lawrence, D. H. "Edgar Allan Poe." The Symbolic Meaning: The Uncollected Versions of 'Studies in Classic American Literature'. Centaur Press Limited, 1962. 115-130. Rpt. In Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Cask of Amontillado The Norton Introduction to Literature . Ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2013. 164-170. Print. Wei-hsin Tien, Morris. "Literature or Psychoanalysis: Poe's Personality and His Works" American Studies 20.4 (1990): 1-38. PDF file .