The Cask of Amontillado

Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe, an American short-story writer, essayist, and poet, published “The Cask of
Amontillado” in 1846. It was his last, and some say greatest, short story. It’s a tale of revenge,
murder, torture, and addiction set in a vast underground Italian catacomb (underground cemetery).
It’s also a journey into the dark and mysterious recesses of the human psyche.

Poe was born on January 19, 1809 to actors David and Eliza Poe. He and his brother and sister were
orphaned shortly before Poe’s second birthday, and were each taken in by different families. Maybe
this helps explain why he was attracted to the dark themes.

His biography is fascinating, and the subject of much debate, gossip, and speculation. For example,
he’s rumored to have died from the bite of a rabid dog, but he probably passed away as a result of
drug- and alcohol-related complications. He was a heavy drinker, and also addicted to the drug
laudanum. This information helps us decipher a difficult symbol in the story, which you can read about
in “Symbols, Imagery, Allegory.”

If you are interested in getting to know Poe better, we’ve provided you with lots of handy links in “Did
You Know?” The most important thing you need to know about Poe is that he was a truly brilliant,
visionary, and influential writer. He basically invented the genre of mystery or detective fiction as well
as science fiction, and he had very precise ideas about what stories are supposed to do and be, as is
reflected in his essays.

What is The Cask of Amontillado About and Why Should I Care?

Why is horror so popular? Our culture is awash with it. Although some may avoid scary movies and
books, most of us crave that occasional tingle running down our spines. But that doesn’t answer our
question: Why? Why do we want to be scared, and why do all these people want to scare us? There
are several answers, not limited to what we talk about here. Horror writers such as Edgar Allan Poe,
author of the dismal tale at hand, will tell you that scary stories are a great way to express social and
personal anxieties over sex, drugs, parents, children, bullies, and war, to name a few. We want to talk
about them because we want to understand them, but we can’t always find the right time or place .For
the person reading or watching horror, it’s also a kind of freedom. The horror story is an argument,
usually a dark and mysterious one, about human nature. By reading or watching, we participate in
this argument. Horror-master Steven King says, “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real
ones” (source). In some ways, we read and watch horror for the same reason: our own lives often
seem nice and calm after a few hours of fear. Plus, Edgar Allan Poe's stories are fun because they're
complicated puzzles. You have to exercise your brain muscles to figure them out. And because “The
Cask of Amontillado” is so very short, we can really focus on its details, and we can read it as many
times as we want.
The Cask of Amontillado Summary

The narrator, Montresor, opens the story by stating that he has been irreparably insulted by his acquaintance,
Fortunato, and that he seeks revenge. He wants to exact this revenge, however, in a measured way, without placing
himself at risk. He decides to use Fortunato’s fondness for wine against him. During the carnival season, Montresor,
wearing a mask of black silk, approaches Fortunato. He tells Fortunato that he has acquired something that could pass
for Amontillado, a light Spanish sherry. Fortunato (Italian for “fortunate”) wears the multicolored costume of the jester,
including a cone cap with bells. Montresor tells Fortunato that if he is too busy, he will ask a man named Luchesi to taste
it. Fortunato apparently considers Luchesi a competitor and claims that this man could not tell Amontillado from other
types of sherry. Fortunato is anxious to taste the wine and to determine for Montresor whether or not it is truly
Amontillado. Fortunato insists that they go to Montresor’s vaults.

Montresor has strategically planned for this meeting by sending his servants away to the carnival. The two men descend
into the damp vaults, which are covered with nitre, or saltpeter, a whitish mineral. Apparently aggravated by the nitre,
Fortunato begins to cough. The narrator keeps offering to bring Fortunato back home, but Fortunato refuses. Instead, he
accepts wine as the antidote to his cough. The men continue to explore the deep vaults, which are full of the dead
bodies of the Montresor family. In response to the crypts, Fortunato claims to have forgotten Montresor’s family coat of
arms and motto. Montresor responds that his family shield portrays “a huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot
crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.” The motto, in Latin, is “nemo me impune lacessit,”
that is, “no one attacks me with impunity.”

Later in their journey, Fortunato makes a hand movement that is a secret sign of the Masons, an exclusive fraternal
organization. Montresor does not recognize this hand signal, though he claims that he is a Mason. When Fortunato asks
for proof, Montresor shows him his trowel, the implication being that Montresor is an actual stonemason. Fortunato
says that he must be jesting, and the two men continue onward. The men walk into a crypt, where human bones
decorate three of the four walls. The bones from the fourth wall have been thrown down on the ground. On the
exposed wall is a small recess, where Montresor tells Fortunato that the Amontillado is being stored. Fortunato, now
heavily intoxicated, goes to the back of the recess. Montresor then suddenly chains the slow-footed Fortunato to a
stone.

Taunting Fortunato with an offer to leave, Montresor begins to wall up the entrance to this small crypt, thereby trapping
Fortunato inside. Fortunato screams confusedly as Montresor builds the first layer of the wall. The alcohol soon wears
off and Fortunato moans, terrified and helpless. As the layers continue to rise, though, Fortunato falls silent. Just as
Montresor is about to finish, Fortunato laughs as if Montresor is playing a joke on him, but Montresor is not joking. At
last, after a final plea, “For the love of God, Montresor!” Fortunato stops answering Montresor, who then twice calls out
his enemy’s name. After no response, Montresor claims that his heart feels sick because of the dampness of the
catacombs. He fits the last stone into place and plasters the wall closed, his actions accompanied only by the jingling of
Fortunato’s bells. He finally repositions the bones on the fourth wall. For fifty years, he writes, no one has disturbed
them. He concludes with a Latin phrase meaning “May he rest in peace.”
The Cask of Amontillado Themes

 Freedom and Confinement

The contrast between freedom and confinement is extreme in “The Cask of Amontillado.” For one character to be free,
another must die. Most of the story takes place in a vast and incredibly foul smelling catacomb, or underground
graveyard. Dead bodies (or at least bones) abound. Freedom becomes less and less of a possibility as the characters
move into smaller and smaller crypts, each one more disgusting than the last. Such confinement makes both the readers
and the characters appreciate the deliciousness of fresh air. Hopefully, it makes us, the readers, think more deeply about
what makes us feel trapped, and what makes us feel free.

 Even though Fortunato dies and Montresor lives, Fortunato is still the freer character of the two.

 Betrayal

Betrayal drives the action in “The Cask of Amontillado." One character’s betrayal sets off a hideous chain of retribution,
enacted below ground in a mass grave. Behind all this revenge and death, the story is about trust. Without trust there
can be no betrayal. The story has much to do with the lengths human being will go to feel better when they feel
betrayed – and the tragedy that comes when those lengths hit murderous extremes.

 Fortunato betrays himself by not paying enough attention to his surroundings.

 Drugs and Alcohol

The only literal drug we see in “The Cask of Amontillado” is wine. But there are many other drugs circulating between
the lines. “Drugs,” in this story, can be anything the characters want badly enough to do awful or foolish things for. The
story’s author, Edgar Allan Poe, struggled with drugs and alcohol. His struggle is carefully woven into this complicated
narrative, which can be read as a gruesome allegory for addiction.

 Pride is a drug in “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Fortunato is addicted to wine; but Montresor has his drinking under control.

 Mortality

“The Cask of Amontillado” has a frightening fixation on death, corpses, and bones. Edgar Allan Poe’s last short story,
written only a few years before his death, is a precise and compact expression of anxieties concerning mortality. But
don’t worry – Poe injects plenty of humor into all the doom and gloom. And in the end, we all feel a little happier to be
alive.

 It’s ironic that, for Montresor to enjoy his own life, he has to take Fortunato’s.

 Foolishness and Folly

In “The Cask of Amontillado” foolishness and folly can cost you your life. The story amplifies human foolishness and folly
to extremes so hideous and cruel they become vices. ”The Cask” only has two characters. By the end of the story, their
combined silliness culminates in tragedy and pain for them both. The tragedy is what makes us think more profoundly
about their foolish ways – in the hopes that we can avoid ending up, even in some metaphorical way, like them.

 Montresor is the real fool in the story.

Montresor
Montresor (if that’s his real name), our narrator, is Mr. Sinister. He’s the guy you don’t want to meet in an underground
graveyard, or anywhere else. He’s a cold and ruthless killer. He not only enjoys killing, but also thinks it’s necessary.
As the narrator, he’s telling the story fifty years after it happened. This raises a whole host of complicated questions.
We’ll cover the main ones in a moment under “Bragging of Confessing,” but first, let’s look at some other aspects of his
character.
Unreliable Narrator

Any critic will tell you that Montresor is “a classic example of an unreliable narrator.” And this is probably true: if he’s
capable of plastering Fortunato into a vault, we can’t trust him. If he’s lying, and he didn’t kill Fortunato, then we still
can’t trust him.
Unless, that is, Montresor’s unreliability reveals truths about human nature.
We talk about Poe’s “secret writing” in “What’s Up With the Title.” We can assume that everything we read about in
“The Cask” is code for something deeper, including Montresor. In fact, we think he’s less a flesh and blood character
than a literary mechanism, meant to provoke emotional responses to reveal our own characters, and ultimately, if we
are brave, to give us a more profound understanding of what it means to be human.
So, if Poe’s technique works, and Montresor makes us understand ourselves and other people better, then maybe
we can trust Montresor − as loathsome as that sounds.

Unsympathetic Character

In addition to being the classic unreliable narrator, on the surface, Montresor is a classically unsympathetic character. A
sympathetic character isn’t necessarily character we feel sympathy for; a sympathetic character is simply a character we
can relate to, at least on some level.
We don’t deny that Montresor is totally alien and practically unknowable to the reader in many ways. But we also think
that pretending we can’t relate to Montresor at all defeats one main purpose of the story. For example, like Montresor,
we all have vengeful urges − though, luckily, few of us ever follow them as far as murder.
Perhaps more importantly, we identify with Montresor because he’s still alive. He got away with what he did without
getting into trouble. We all have a skeleton (or skeletons) in our closets, even if it’s only that library book we forgot to
return. Regardless, the longer our tawdry secrets remain undetected, the longer we can tell ourselves we’ve gotten
away with them.
Montresor is an exaggerated, over-the-top figure. He’s the embodiment of the sneaky, vengeful part of human beings.
By examining these qualities in his extreme personality, we can better analyze some of the less pleasant aspects of our
own. If we pretend we can’t relate to Montresor at all, we miss this opportunity for self-reflection.

Confessing or Bragging

This is another area where we can totally identify with Montresor. Critics have been arguing for a hundred years over
whether Montresor is confessing his sins or bragging about his crimes. We say it’s probably a bit of both.
And this is something we can all relate to. Sometimes we get away with something that other people think is wrong but
that we don’t think is wrong. Other times, we know what we did is wrong, and we wish somebody would find out so we
can somehow try to make things right.
In both cases, we would love to tell somebody. When we brag, we want somebody to pat us on the back. When we
confess, we want forgiveness; we want to be free of the burden of our secrets. And sometimes, we may not even know
whether we are bragging or confessing until after we tell.
So, whether you think Montresor is confessing, bragging, or some combination of the two, you can relate to his desire to
tell what he’s done, after all of this time.
Fortunato
At first glance, Fortunato seems easier to identify with than Montresor. It’s much simpler to relate to the victim than to
the victimizer. But, in some ways, he seems even more foreign to the reader than Montresor. Part of this is because
Montresor is telling us the story, and he doesn’t give us much information on his prey.
As you surely noticed, Montresor doesn’t tell us how Fortunato hurt him, nor how he insulted him. So we can’t really say
whether Fortunato’s punishment fits his crime.
If we get hung up on trying to figure out if Fortunato deserved to die that way, we might miss out on one of the story’s
biggest riddles: just what are Fortunato’s weak points? Montresor gives us his opinion − Fortunato’s a little too
conceited about his knowledge of wine − but that’s not his only fatal flaw.
Why would we want to identify Fortunato’s weaknesses? Because, on some level, they probably mirror our own. If we
can see ourselves in Fortunato, maybe we can learn something from the story. Luckily for us, Fortunato seems to be
weak points personified, so his weaknesses are easy to spot. Here are a few of them, but we bet you can add to the list.

Addiction

Fortunato is addicted to wine. He’s already really drunk when he meets Montresor, and he thinks the Amontillado can
help him take it to the next level. Right up until the end, he thinks of Amontillado, and only Amontillado. Plus, he lets
Montresor get him get even more drunk down in the catacomb. His addiction leaves him vulnerable to Montresor’s
attack.

Insensitivity

Whether he really hurt and insulted Montresor or not, he’s so insensitive, he doesn’t notice that Montresor is mad at
him, something any fool can see. And he just guzzles Montresor’s wine without even saying “thank you.” Because he’s so
insensitive, he’s a poor judge of character.

Pride and Greed

He’s either too proud or too greedy. Maybe Montresor doesn’t need to bring up Luchesi to get Fortunato down in the
hole, but it doesn’t hurt. Fortunato either wants to prove that he’s a better wine taster than Luchesi, or he wants to
make sure Luchesi doesn’t get his hands on the Amontillado.

Trust

Being too trusting can be a weakness – if you hang out with guys like Montresor. Montresor says he made sure
Fortunato had no reason to doubt him. But still, Fortunato should know better than to follow a masked man into a
catacomb. Hasn’t he ever watched a horror movie?

Luchesi
Luchesi isn’t really a character. He’s more of a plot device. He helps drive the action. Luchesi is Fortunato’s rival in wine
tasting. Montresor doesn’t really need to bring up Luchesi to lure Fortunato to his dire fate. The prospect of Amontillado
is enough. Luchesi is a kind of insurance for Montresor. He brings Luchesi up whenever he wants to keep Fortunato
distracted – like right before he “fetter[s] him to the granite.” But again, Montresor doesn’t really need to evoke the
name of Luchesi. Fortunato is not only drunk, but also willing to do anything to get to the Amontillado. Montresor is just
playing with him, exploiting Fortunato’s “weak point[s],” with a little help from Luchesi.