The fact the he looks back on the incident makes it even more unreliable, which are only reinforced with the fact the puts Fortunates in an unfavorable light through his descriptions of him and his actions, "I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo” (p. 2 l. 8) In this quotation he describes Fortunate as a burden. Edgar Allan Poe uses both dramatic irony, where the readers perceive things that the character in the story does not, and verbal irony where the characters say something, but mean something else. Dramatic irony is to be seen in the naming of the characters. The symbolic meaning of Montresor is “monster” and the symbolic meaning of Fortunato is “fortunate”. The irony is that Fortunato is not fortunate, as he end up being killed.
Stevenson used his novel to criticise the Victorian society, which he lived in: showing how hypocritical it was. He attacked the men of his time, peeling off their masks to show how they were respectable by day but turned into demons by night; the wealthy and respected camouflaged their evil secrets and desires and hid them behind paper like walls, just out of sight. He unveiled and presented to the world the scandalous passages the upper class had weaved demonstrating how there really was a fine line between it and the classes beneath it. This essay will explore and interpret and try to understand how Stevenson explores the theme of duality in ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’? Within his own life Stevenson experienced and saw contrasts; two different sides, duality almost.
“Take thou this vial, being then in bed, and this distilled liquor drink thou off”. This brainless, unwise man who claims himself to be a man of god, actually did this moronic act and gave Juliet the risky potion that could’ve been deadly. “Give me, oh give me!” helpless Juliet says after hearing about the potion. Why does Friar Lawrence give her only one option of drinking the potion and not an option of confessing her sins? Friar Lawrence continues to commit his horrifying acts by lying as he fakes the funeral of Juliet.
The words cask and casket have the same root. The relationship between the two represents the means to draw Fortunato down to the catacombs and then on to the bricked casket. Fortunato's passion for good wine leaves him impressionable to flattery, which Montresor provides. Amontillado symbolizes pleasure and greed, and Fortunato is willing to travel through a graveyard to get what he wants. The need for wine betrays him, and the Amontillado signals his downfall.
This aroused people to think Poe was a sociopath and strange as a person in real life. The title, “The Cask of Amontillado” has a meaning of its own. The word “cask” is the root word for “casket” which symbolizes Fortunato casket and Amontillado which is the wine he was lured into Montresor’s trap. In this story, Poe is telling the story in first person point of view. He is Montresor, the protagonist of the story who will take revenge on Fortunato, the antagonist.
Parker Freeman Revenge is a Cask Best Served Cold In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” the author uses the characterization of Montresor to show that justified vengeance, no matter how well executed, can possibly cause guilt. In the exposition of the story, the reader finds that the protagonist, Montresor, has a major problem with another man. Montresor rationalizes his problem “The thousands injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” (pg. 818) Montresor gives reason to his anger, attempting justify his vengeance. As the story progresses, Montresor begins enacting his devious plan to get back at Fortunato.
The title of story plays a big part in deceiving Fortunato. The word cask, which means wine barrel, is derived from the same root word used to form casket, meaning coffin. Therefore when Montresor is speaking of going to the cask he is ironically speaking of Fortunato’s casket (Cummings 2). Along with the title Fortunato’s name is very ironic. In Italian Fortunato means fortunate one, this is ironic because Fortunato is very unfortunate in the story because he is being led to his death and is treated like a fool.
This type of irony can be recognized in the statements that the characters, Fortunato and Montresor, say to one another. Through the use of foreshadowing, irony, and symbolism, Poe paints a horrific drama of two men. One who will stop at nothing to get the revenge that he deems himself and his family worthy of, and another whose pride will ultimately be the fall of his own death. Fortunato falls prey to Montressor's plans because he is so proud of his connoisseurship of wine, and it is for the sake of his own pride that Montressor takes revenge on Fortunato. Poe utilizes literary techniques such as foreshadowing, revenge with pride, and irony, in order to create a horrific and suspenseful masterpiece.
|ENGLISH 102 | |[ ESSAY # 1 , Final Copy] | |“The Cask of Amontillado” | |Victor Grigorov | |2/22/2012 | The Cask of Amontillado The Cask of Amontillado, written by Edgar Allan Poe, is a story with the theme of revenge where the narrator Montresor tries to persuade the reader that his carefully crafted murder of Fortunato is deserved. The ominous tale is told through Montresor, a witty and sinister man who plots vengeance against Fortunato for insulting his family. Montresor’s family motto is "Nemo me impune lacessit," (159) which means, "No one dare attack me with impunity” (159), and he certainly lives up to these words. Since the narration is told through the character Montresor, the audience gets a dark look inside the evil thoughts of a man scorned, and is able to get closer to the cold heart of a killer. Throughout the story, Montresor tries to convince the reader that Fortunato is a cruel drunk, and his own plans for murder are just.
The Fall of Fortunato When Edgar Allan Poe wrote his short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” little did he know that it would easily become one of the most criticized works in literary history. A gripping tale of a hatred stemming from countless usurpations, it would be hard to not see an obvious motive for murder. However, as Graham St. John Scott discusses in his brief criticism, the death of Fortunato by the hands of Montresor may delve much deeper than a lust for revenge. He argues that an essence of divinity surrounds the murderer, where an evil surrounds Fortunato. Using Calvinism, he says that this story is not one of cold blooded homicide, but of the classic dichotomy of good versus evil.