Essays on Montresor

“The Cask of Amontillado” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1846. The story deals with revenge, torture and murder and it is set in a catacomb where skeletons might be seen like in underground Paris. The story is also about Montresor’s murderous mind and the actions which let him plot his revenge. Montresor is the narrator of the story as well as the protagonist and the murderer. He is a cold and merciless person who believes in murder as a necessary way to defend his honor. Fortunato mocks him numerous times and Montresor ...

Violence and Revenge

Violence and revenge only hurt people. Human beings are known for their innate desire for revenge, which makes vengeance part of our survival mechanics. However, those with mental illness pose more danger of harming others since they are driven by their subconscious mind to revenge against physical and verbal abuse and could use weird forms in the process. Revenge is often cruel, lustful and insatiable to the extent that a provoked mentally ill person would do anything to ensure they make others pay for physical or verbal abuse. Such acts of violence and revenge pose major problems in the ...

Response #1

Giddings, Franklin. The Relation of the Criminal to Society. Proceedings of the Academy of

Political Science in the City of New York 1(4), 1911, 559-62.

This article asserts that some of the acts that the legislature defines as crimes are not actions that can cause much harm to the society and future generations, but there are acts that are defined as crimes that pose grave dangerous. Accordingly, the author notes that if one assumes that every person who commits a crime is a criminal then it is hard to find a person who is not a criminal in the United States. In this regard, the article presents two kinds of ‘ ...

The story, The Cask of Amontillado, is surely one of the finest works of literature even penned by a creative artist. This literary work by the stalwart author, Edgar Allan Poe, goes on to engage the avid readers and stirs them to the very core with the portrayal of sheer horror that marks the end of the story. This story is about the theme of revenge and shows the male protagonist who is also the narrator of the story trap another character named Fortunato. ““The Cask of Amontillado” remains one of Poe’s most popular short stories and a ...

The Cask of Amontillado was one of famous American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. It involves the story of the narrator named Montresor and his arch enemy, at least based on his perceptions, named Fortunato. In the beginning of the story, Montresor was wailing about how he has been irreparably insulted by his acquaintance—referring to Fortunato. An almost clear picture of what type of character Montresor has can be obtained as early as the first few paragraphs of the short story. The main and sub-conflicts in the story were mainly the result of Montresor’s hunger ...

Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction used symbols and intense imagery to tap into the dark and unknown parts of human existence. Hit gothic tales sought to redefine the ultimate human experience by showing the prevalence of horror in everyday life. Normal individuals are driven to rage and madness and they get to commit the most heinous crimes without reasonable justification for their actions. In “Legia” and “The Black Cat”, Poe relies on symbolism and imagery to show humanity’s relationship with nature and death. Poe explores man’s attempt at rationalizing the irrational. This paper seeks to compare and ...

It was the best event I ever experienced in my life – the carnival season just started and it seemed that all the citizens got crazy at one and the same time. They drank wine, cheated on, caroused and hid everything under their masks and costumes. I decided not to fall behind and put on the most expensive clothes that I had in order to have an impressive look of a noble and admired man and one of the best wine connoisseurs. The conical cap with bells completed my costume of motley. At first I wanted to show off and ...

In Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story, The Cask of Amontillado, the readers come across the narrator who is also the protagonist of the story. Montresor is the vile narrator of this story by Poe. The first person narrative comes across to be very merciless, cold, conniving and cruel. The narrator never minds telling the reads that he goes on to torture and then kill Fortunato. Montresor thinks that he did a just act through his brutality. The avid readers of the tale are truly surprised to find that Montresor’s point of view also encompassed writing and poetry. ...

There is never an opportune moment for death. Death occurs when people least expect it. Edgar Allen Poe in his “The Cask of Amontillado” and Kate Chopin in her “The Story of an Hour” talk about how death comes at inopportune moments - when it is least expected. Death is the central theme in both of these works, with the protagonists wishing for someone else’s death. The results however are completely different. Even though the protagonists wish for the other person to die, they really do not have a strong reason for them to die. Montresor talks of ...

Horror through Imagination: How do Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and Shirley Jackson create suspense in their stories “Harvey’s Dream,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Lottery”

Introduction

Suspense is a literary style that is adopted by most authors to invoke the creative minds of the audience. Therefore, the authors intentionally fail to draw a conclusion to an event in a story, but instead live it upon the audience to think. On the other hand, mystery is an occurrence that is beyond human understanding, and in most cases it is associated with murder. This essay is anchored on these ...

It was one of the best events I have got a chance to experience in my life. Carnival in small Italian city with plenty of people. I have put nice and elegant clothes on in order to attract people’s attention and have an amazing night. I felt a bit drunk and dizzy, when I got to the celebration. There were plenty of food and free drinks, people were enjoying themselves dancing and talking. I also got a chance to meet my old friend Montresor there. I was astonished and felt guilty at the same time. I still could ...

The two short stories "The Cask of the Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell depict psychological portraits of the protagonists’ criminal behavior. However, while both characters commit a crime, their motives, as well as the patterns of thinking and behavior are absolutely different. Montresor, the protagonist of “The Cask of the Amontillado”, commits a murder as a revenge that is a result of his pride and jealousy to his victim Fortunato. Montresor is portrayed as a criminal, who is so absorbed with the revenge that he does not mention why exactly he retaliates. ...

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Cask of Amontillado, is a confession of a murder that occurred 50 years prior, whereby the narrator was never caught or tried despite his wrongdoing. It tells of one man’s hatred against an unsuspecting individual, whom the narrator has been plotting to kill because of alleged insults the individual made towards him (Baraban 47). All throughout the story, it was never revealed what these remarks were, but which apparently wounded the narrator’s ego so much that he wanted to exact vengeance on the person. Betrayal is also a central theme in the story ...

English

Edgar Allen Poe can best be described as a writer who was seriously influenced by neo-Gothic interests. A great American writer, Poe was attracted and influenced by the neo-Gothic writers much before his time because of which, most of his work is on horror. Poe was also witness to a period of uncertainty in society as deceit, murder for gain, revenge and arson was quite common. While courts played an important role in trying to curb this menace, cases were manipulated to benefit the guilty. This had a profound impact on Poe who used certain themes of court matters to develop his ...

One of the main characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are an artistic disclosure and analysis of the human psyche and the research of how human psychology determines people’s actions. The author considered the human personality not in the aspects of its morality, neither of its philosophical views, nor of the activity of political consciousness, but in the most difficult aspect – psychology. The prose heritage of Poe is mostly represented by his “scary” short stories, which include such tales as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Oval Portrait”, “Ligeia”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, ...

The majority of the narrator’s in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories have at least a little bit wrong with them. Even in “Pit and the Pendulum,” while the narrator appears to be an innocent victim of the Spanish Inquisition, his time below ground has certainly pushed his perspective toward the breaking point. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator is convinced that he is not insane, and he is bent on convincing the reader that he is not insane. However, the fact that he waits until his murder victim’s eyes are open at night (and that the correct eye ...

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most mysterious and remarkable writers of the 19th century, whose artistic heritage has always been readers’ and critics’ concern. Being a representative of the American Romanticism, Poe is also well known as an innovator of new genres of literature (detective-fiction and science fiction genres) and as successful practitioner of the short story. His literature style is considered to be macabre and anxious, and the theme of a death is presented in the most of his short stories, and every time it is inextricably linked with psychological conditions of the heroes. “The Masque of the ...

“The Cask of Amontillado” is a story of revenge told in the first-person point of view. Montresor, the killer, narrates in detail the crime he committed fifty years ago against Fortunato for “insulting” him. It was apparent that Fortunato invested a great amount of time in plotting his revenge, but it was unclear why after fifty years, he was finally telling the story that no one ever found out. This is the first hint to the complexities of the character of Montresor which, as the story progresses, contradicted then interestingly intertwined with that of Fortunato’s that in the end it ...

There is a thin line between personal freedom of choice and the moral inclination of an individual. The choice chosen draws guidance from one’s own personal beliefs and morals. As such, there is conflict at times between what one is free to do and what their morals enable them to do. At times, whatever is to be done is legal and one is free to do them but their own morals come into conflict and stop them from the undertaking. As such, this paper will clearly discuss the concepts of freedom of options versus personal morals. An analysis of ...

“Instructor’s name’

‘Subject’ “The Birth-Mark” and “The Cask of Amontillado” – A comparative study Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are two important contributors of the nineteenth-century American literature. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most celebrated authors, posthumously though, of the past century. Some of his stories are almost autobiographical, and though he lived in a previous era, his ideas were far ahead of his time. Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author, whose works are even today cited for seeking ethical guidance. His stories urge the reader to analyze his moral confusions. This essay is an attempt to compare and ...

Analysis of Poe’s Short Stories

Reading Edgar Allan Poe’s short story - “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Tell- Tale Heart” and “The Oval Portrait” – is indeed very gripping and thrilling. With every sentence that one reads more interest and curiosity builds up to know what will happen next in the story. Each of these stories is about horror, death and killing, with a great element of suspense. The Gothic element therefore is very strong in all the three short stories. Joanne Harris (Edgar Allan Poe, p.42) stated in The Telegraph that Poe is a master of horror and one of his strongholds is the detailed ...

Introduction:

Edgar Allen Poe was a great storyteller and one of the most important fiction horror story writers of his age. He was also credited with inventing the detective story when he came out with his Auguste Lupin character that was based in Paris and is rather a forerunner of Sherlock Holmes. In fact three of the classic Dupin cases; ‘The Purloined Letter’, ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’and ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget depict three classic situations which continue to affirm the point that Poe was the father of the detective novel. However this makes us observe the clarity with which ...

Montresor planned Fortunato’s revenge masterfully. He knew that Fortunato loved wine and he planned his revenge to coincide with a time when Fortunato could be drunk and to take advantage of the carnival. Montresor specifically planned to murder Fortunato when drunk during a carnival. Montresor states, “He accosted me with excessive warmth for he had been drinking much” (Poe) He (Montresor) tricked Fortunato that he had obtained a pipe of Amontillado-a kind of wine. He urged Fortunato to help him identify the authenticity of the Amontillado but Fortunato was doubtful that Montresor could receive a pipe (about 500 litres of wine) during ...

“The Cask of the Amontillado,” is a short story presenting a death revenge castigated by Montresor the narrator to his unsuspecting friend Fortunato. Montresor fails to specify the reason that forces him to murder his friend in cold blood. He only affirms to the audience that Fortunato had irreparably affronted him. The narrator is successful in killing Fortunato; however, in the end it is obvious that the whole narration is recollection of his murder about fifty years ago. In the second story the “Night Drive,” by Rubem Fonseca an anonymous narrator presents the story in first person acclaiming his murder of ...

Scholars mainly utilize symbols to convey and express people’s emotions in order to develop their stories or arguments. Edgar Allan strategically employs this style by utilizing physical images and spaces in portraying the feeling of various characters under different set ups. Opposing feelings may have little difference among individuals with strong personalities. For example, it is often hard to know when someone loves or hates something. The paper analyzes how Edgar Allan employs physical images and spaces of confinement in describing the psychological states of people in his scripts The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven. ...

While the term madness has no standard definition, I understand it as a state of mind where a person is not in a position to make informed decisions. This essentially means that a mad person always or at most times portrays irrationality in their decisions. They lack reason and cannot be judged as being objectively right in their thinking. However, mad people do not see the insanity in them, for this reason, many philosophers, including the famous Rene Descartes, have argued that perhaps we, who think we are normal, are the mad ones, and those we perceive as being mad, are the normal ...

The Cask of Amontillado is a gripping story by Edgar Allan Poe which explores the realm of human emotions. The author pens the literary work and aptly exudes his expertise though the various devices which are used to enhance the tumultuous influence of the story on the minds of the readers. A close analysis of the characters and the theme along with the other literary devices will make one comprehend the excellence and the paramount influence of the story on the human minds. The author personifies his “hostile feelings and thoughts, symbolizing the repressed instincts of the personality” in the ...

In his short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allen Poe presents a narrator who entraps an enemy by appealing to the vices of his character. The narrator does not explain very much of why Fortunato is his enemy; he simply notes “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (p. 191). For most of the story, the reader does not know the name of the narrator, only the name of his enemy. However, it is clear from the first paragraph that the narrator seeks revenge, and ...

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is a frightening example of a person, endeavoring to avoid punishing a person through legal means, and would rather resort to a personal manner of inflicting the righteous retribution. What makes this story all the more frightening is the lack of explanation on why the narrator feels so extremely insulted by his victim, but in a sense, this idea delves into the very core of human relations and to what extent one would go to seek revenge. Thus, by using the murderer as the narrator, Poe is depicting his story through the lens of ...

Edgar Allan Poe is known for the horror and thriller in his stories. He has got special skills to make readers keyed up by his writing, presentation and special style of arranging incidents of any story. The author in his highly acclaimed story, Liegia has presented a new style of horror and thrill before the readers. The author is somehow very attached to the Ligeia as he addresses the story as the best among rest of his stories. This paper discusses the author’s work and further talks about one of the main themes of the literary work by the ...

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thorea was surely one of the finest writers to emanate from the United States before the Civil War. His novel Walden describes an almost perfect settlement where the subject lives simply in natural surroundings and is an ideal introduction to his seminal work. Another important work is his essay on Civil Disobedience which is perhaps one of the best known elements which argues for resistance to civil government which is a moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau’s books and articles number over 20 volumes and he has several contributions on natural history and philosophy where ...

“The Cask of Amantillado” is one of those truly classic Poe stories which reveal the depth of human revenge and depravation to right a wrong which is obviously something which rankles extremely deeply. The story reads as a detailed confession that will only be known the murderer and the reader. It is loosely based upon the story of “Romeo and Juliet” with two rival families, involving Montresor and Fortunato, two supposed friends but in their heart of hearts, they are indeed sworn enemies.

Montresor has vowed to destroy Fortunato once and for all for the various wrongs which he perceived were ...

The narrator, in Poe's "the cask of Amontillado" says that he will punish Fortunato with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.'' present an argument that Montresor in fact does not punish Fortunato with impunity. This is one of those truly classic Poe stories which reveals the depth of human revenge and depravation to right a wrong which is obviously something which rankles extremely deeply. It is loosely based upon the story of Romeo and Juliet with two rival families, involving Montresor and and Fortunato, two supposed friends but in their heart of hearts, they are ...