In the ten years following 1836, Edgar Allan Poe established himself as a short story writer, writing the well known stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” in 1843 and “The Cask of Amontillado” in 1846. As dark as his nature was, the two stories were equally dark, one about a man killing an elderly man with a creepy eye, and the other about a rich dude killing someone who insulted him. As both of the tales possess main elements of murder and death, both of them also have elements that link the stories even more such as their protagonists, character motivations, and resolutions.
As characters go, Montresor and the unnamed murderer of “The Tell-Tale Heart” are extremely devious. Montresor from “The Cask of Amontillado” was deceitful enough to use reverse psychology on everyone he
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In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Montresor claims the only reason why he killed Fortunato was because of an insult, that could have just been minor, to hold up his family name. Montresor explains his namesake by showing Fortunato his coat of arms when Montresor says, “‘A human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.’” (Poe 61) While the Montresor family’s coat of arms shows that they retaliate to any sort of disrespect with revenge, it is still inhumane and, as far as the setting is concerned, illegal to murder someone due to an insult, however much it may have been done. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the murderer only kills the elderly man because he is bothered by his eye. When the murderer states, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!” (Poe 1), the murderer claims only did what he did because he was simply irritated and quite clearly mad. Nothing but both of the murderer’s minds can excuse the acts of murder each of them planned out because they were
In Edgar Allen Poe's “ The Cask Of Amontillado”, Montresor, the narrator is insane. “The Cask Of Amontillado” is a story of revenge. Montresor is mad at Fortunato because he said an insult about Montresor. He got so mad that he plotted an extremely good plan to kill Fortunato. At the end of the story Montresor did eventually go to the catacombs and kill him, but nobody has found out that he is dead and it has been 50 years ago. Montresor is insane because he is pleased by the sound of other people's misfortune and suffering and he wants revenge over an insult.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” is a short psychological thriller. The murder of Fortunato haunts Montresor so greatly that he feels the compulsion to tell the story some fifty years after the fact. He appears to be in the late stages of life desperately attempting to remove the stain of murder from his mind. That it is still so fresh and rich in specifics is proof that it has plagued him, “Perhaps the most chilling aspect of reading Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ for the first time is not the gruesome tale that Montresor relates, but the sudden, unpredictable, understated revelation that the murder, recounted in its every lurid detail, occurred not yesterday or last week, but a full fifty years prior to the telling” (DiSanza).
Edgar Allan Poe is known for some of the most horrifying stories ever written through out time. He worked with the natural world, animals, and weather to create chilling literature. Two most notable thrillers are “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe was infatuated with death, disfigurement, and dark characteristics of the world. He could mix characters, setting, theme,and mood in a way that readers are automatically drawn into reading. Both of these short stories have the same major aspects in common.
The power to change is man’s greatest struggles, since a strong influence that lead them to where they are now. It is also the price and journey that both Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart” and the narrator of the “The Cask of Amontillado”, another of poe’s story. In both story the narrators, both indicate that they want to get rid of an addiction they had that is driving them to madness, and in order to do so they, must do it at any cost. Both narrator clearly plan on their instincts and carefully plans out methods in which leads them to their satisfaction. These stories contain many similarities and differences in the use of tone, irony and symbolism, of the protagonist. Through these characters and their actions,
Have you ever met someone so clever, determined, and cruel to leave a man to die over an insult? Montresor is the perfect example of these character traits. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, by Edgar Allan Poe, Montresor uses all of these character traits to get revenge on Fortunado for insulting his family name. Montresor’s clever planning, determination for revenge, and cruel murder are the perfect combination for his unequaled revenge.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” stories. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a guy who keeps an old man in a room and watches him sleep for a week and then kills him because of his “Vulture eye”. He got away with it until his conscience got the best of him.“The Cask of Amontillado” is about a guy who's getting revenge on a wine steward by leading him all the way down to the cellar and then bricking him into the wall.He heard the man making noises but he didn’t stop to look back.The theme that both stories have in common is that revenge although seems nice, isnt for everyone.Both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” had a slight bit of things in common but there were more things that were different than alike.One main thing that they have in common is that both ways the main characters killed people were thinking similar ideas and they had similarities in thinking and the actions they used.
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story told in the gothic genre. Although this story was written decades after the popularity of the genre, The gothic genre through its descriptions of the atmosphere as well as its use of grotesque and macabre imagery creates a sense of alienation, chaos, entrapment, uncertainty, and terror in the reader. Gothic literature often deals with themes of death, fears and anxieties, good vs evil, estrangement, and revenge. Furthermore, gothic literature often ends with a sense of moral closure and resolution. The Cask of Amontillado use of gothic conventions can be seen in its setting. However, the story’s unconventional use of irony and omission of moral closure adds to the psychological
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” published in 1843, and “The Cask of Amontillado,” published in 1846, are two literary works of Gothic fiction written by Edgar Allan Poe. Both of these compelling stories have many prominent similarities and differences. Poe has developed unstable narrators in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” but the circumstances in each story are distinctively different. While an old man’s hideous eye drives the narrator to madness in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the thirst for revenge influences the narrator in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Although both stories contain a disturbed narrator, the narrator’s personality, the narrator’s motive for murder, and how the narrator displays their guilt is drastically different.
In the Cask of Amontillado, our narrator’s situation is one he is quite happy being in. Our narrator is Montresor, an Italian man rich with pride, and you quickly learn through his narration that he is intelligent, conniving, and extremely sinister. Throughout the story, everything Montresor does is motivated by one thing, his own thirst for vengeance. Montresor explains his actions are a result of Fortunato constantly abusing him and finally going too far, but he never explains anything Fortunato has done to insult him. When we meet Fortunato, he is extremely friendly towards Montresor, albeit a little intoxicated, so much that he makes Montresor’s story of “a thousand injuries” seem unbelievable (Cask 1). Compared to Gilman’s narrator whose spiral out of control was triggered by her forced seclusion from the outside world, it seems that Montresor’s insanity come from inside his own head. There is no evidence that suggest any attempts by Fortunato to belittle or insult Montresor in any way. I believe that Montresor may have been jealous of Fortunato’s success in life, and that is what drove him to vengeance. For example, on their way to the catacombs Fortunato makes a hand gesture of the Masons, a secret brotherhood, which Montresor doesn’t understand. Fortunato ask if Montresor is a Mason and for him to prove it, and Montresor lies and shows his trowel (Cask 5). This proves that
Paul Babiak addresses, “If psychopaths commit a homicide, their killing likely will be planned and purposeful, not the result of a loss of emotional control; their motive more commonly will involve sadistic gratification” (Psychopathy 7). The revenge Montresor is planning to implant on Fortunato was not by chance. He sought out his plot to manipulate, pathologically lie, and send Fortunato onto his death. Afterward, Montresor felt no sense of guilt or remorse. Montresor didn’t show a lack of empathy towards the situation. He admits, “There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, […]; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, […], that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction” (Poe 9). His satisfaction of the furious vibrations of the noise that he stays concentrating on is merely an act of feeling no sense of remorse, guilt, or empathy towards the suffering he is causing Fortunato (Poe
Poe presents the narrators of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" as devious, obsessed characters. Both are overpowered by the need to consume the life of their victim. Though they use different strategies to carry out the murders in different ways, obsession is the driving force in both. It is this obsession that inspires them to design cunning strategies and carry out the executions.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a frightening and entertaining short story about the severe consequences that result from persistent mockery and an unforgiving heart. Poe’s excellent use of Gothicism within the story sets the perfect tone for a dark and sinister plot of murder to unfold. “The Cask of Amontillado” simply overflows with various themes and other literary elements that result from Poe’s Gothic style of writing. Of these various themes, one that tends to dominant the story as a whole is the theme of revenge, which Poe supports with his sophisticated use of direct and indirect factors, irony, and symbolism.
Poe 's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a deep impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit Edgar Allan Poe as the "architect" of the modern short story. Poe was the author of the two short stories “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator has an obsession fixed on the old man’s “evil” eye which leads him into madness and hate, and to killing the man he claims that he loved. The Montresor of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” hates his enemy Fortunato and he becomes obsessed with the thought of getting back at Fortunato, his hate becomes increasingly
Murder is a risk. But Alice Sebold once said: “Murderers are not monsters, they’re men. And that’s the most frightening thing about them.” This perfectly describes the murderer in “The Cask of Amontillado”. In this story, Poe Edgar describes a perfectly executed murder by Montresor. Montresor is a smart, manipulative man and a good liar who wants revenge on Fortunado. Using his skills he can lead him into the deepness of his cave and make him drunk. Combined with his emotions, this makes him to a perfect murderer.
Edgar Allan Poe is a famous writer in writing detective stories and horror stories. One of his horror stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” was talking about how a man took his revenge to his friend. However, to look deeply in this story, I found that this story was not just simply a horror tale about how a man gets his revenge in the safest way. Instead, it also demonstrates much irony in several areas: the title, the event, the season, the costume, the environment, the characters’ personalities, a man’s dignity and cockiness and at the end, the public order. he are