Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic, and a representative of the literary movement called Romanticism. He became popular thanks to his dark and grim short stories. Poe is considered to be the founder of the detective-fiction genre and psychological prose in literature. He is immediately recognized by his famous poem “The Raven.” But the writer proved his ability to create dread and fear not only in poetic lines, but also in prose. The short story “The Cask of Amontillado” that takes an honored place in Poe’s gallery of nightmares and horror accurately represented the downing era of Romanticism, but Poe’s well renowned poem “The Raven” has received diverse critical opinions and yet appealed to the different tastes of readership over centuries. Though “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” may seem to be completely unrelated works, a closer examination of each work’s narrator reveals a common theme of the delicate grasp that humans have over their sanity.
In both “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” the author creates a mysterious and terrifying tone by placing the narrator of each work in a dark and lonely setting. In the poem the actions happen: “Once upon a midnight dreary . . . / . . . / in the bleak December / and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor” (Poe lines 1, 7-8). The narrator is sitting alone in a dark room on a winter night. Such a setting is used to psychologically prepare the reader for the dreadful things that will happen and in order to hold the needed atmosphere throughout the poem. In “The Cask of Amontillado, the main goal is to introduce the setting and demonstrate the author’s intention to establish the narrator’s tenuous grasp of sanity, right from the start. Poe's narrator is seen as unreliable because he suffers from irrational thinking and thus the reader gets only a fragmented picture of his intentions at times. On the other hand, we sense that Montresor’s sense of humour is dark and horrifying to a degree that warns us not to trust what the character (Baraban).
When introducing Fortunato as the protagonist of the story, the reader gets to know about the dark intentions of the human mind and can sense the psychological intentions of the character that symbolise the theme of the whole story. From the beginning to end, the setting in reality mirrors the insane notion that Montressor has planned for exacting revenge upon Fortunato. In the short story the scene unfolds in the vaults of the palace in Italy: “down under the ground, deep under the old walls of my palace” (Poe lines 1, 7-8).). While walking down the corridors of catacombs deeper and deeper into the darkness, the writer escalates the situation by adding more and more horrifying epithets and descriptions. He does it with the same purpose as in the poem – to deep the reader into this horrifying setting. Again the goal is to show how the setting mirrors the narrator’s growing lack of sanity. The motto of the main character is "Nemo me impune lacessit," which translates as "No one attacks me with impunity” (Poe).
Edgar Allan Poe is a master of imagery who healthy connects drama with subtle irony to reveal the dark sanity of his portrayed characters. He uses it in both his works to convey the feeling of fear, terror and approaching and inevitable death. In “The Raven” the author plays with different types of imagery. The visual imagery is aimed to appeal to the reader’s sense of vision and is developed in the poem through the description of the place. Poe uses such epithets like: “dreary,” “bleak,” “dying,” “dark,” “sad,” “fantastic terrors,” “mortal,” “grave and stern,” “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous” and many others in order to create a scary image (Poe). With the masterful verbal use of epithets, the author prepares the readers for the upcoming horror and persistence of the inevitable grimness in characters. Poe conveys the narrator’s feelings and emotions that immediately are transmitted to the reader: “weak and weary,” “thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors,” “wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming dreams” (Poe). The auditory imagery also plays a great role in the poem, as the raven comes to him after knocking at the door. Such a sudden and unexpected interruption also brings a drop into this ocean of fear created by the author. He writes: “suddenly there came a tapping, / as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token” (Poe lines 3, 27). The repetitive use of the word “tapping” in the poem wakes up the anxiety and makes the reader be on the alert.
The imagery in “The Cask of Amontillado” is also intended to convey the feeling of fear and sentiment. Poe mentions all the time the similar epithets as the tools of visual imagery: “cool, dark, still”, “fierce light”, “thick darkness” and “foulness of the air”, “walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons” (Poe). The feel of dread also transmitted through the feelings of Fortunato. He is “trembling with the cold” and coughs all the time. The coughing may be a signal of suffocation that is waiting for Fortunato at the end of the story. The raven’s tapping and Fortunato’s coughing has the same purpose in the works of Poe. The auditory imagery also takes place in the story: “low moaning cry from the depth”, “I closed the lock and chained him” (Poe).
One more thing common within these two works is they both have two characters: the narrator and the raven in the poem and the narrator and Fortunato in the story. In both works one of the characters causes pain and makes the other one feel fear.
The difference between “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado” is in the form of writing and that in the story the narrator is the one, who brings suffering and in the poem it is the raven, which makes the narrator lose his sanity. Poe intentionally focuses on loss to cause pain and suffering as the psychological explications of the human mind. If “The Raven” focuses more on regret and deep grief of his main character, then “The Cask of Amontillado” deals with purposeful madness and destruction as the root of evil in humans.
Works Cited
Baraban, Elena V. "The Motive for Murder in 'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Poe”, Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature. Volume 58, Number 2. Fall 2004. PDF.
Poe, Edgar Alan. “The Cask of Amontillado”. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed.
Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
Poe, Edgar Alan. “The Raven”. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
