Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 and was found barely conscious two years after his wife death on a Baltimore street in 1949; three days later, he was dead at age forty. Just like the way he live his life and died, many of his stories and poems were a mystery. Two of his most famous works “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” were dark and mysterious fictions with dark characters and mysterious plots. “The Cask of Amontillado” was a story about the dark act of satanic pursuit of revenge, unlike “The Raven”, which invited us into the soul of a grieving man. Both stories were essential and gave meaning to what Poe was going through during those years of his life. His wife was sick and dying from “tuberculosis” (385). He had already started grieving before “his wife died in 1847 (385). Poe wrote “The Raven in 1844” and “The Cask of Amontillado” in 1846 which are among his most popular works. In “The Cask of Amontillado” the story is being told by Montresor who is the actual villain in the story. It is a chilling tale of revenge told as if it was a deathbed confession.” Many reviewers unfairly single Poe’s works out as coming directly from his subconscious, ignoring not only how carefully Poe chose his words and phrases but also the sources that inspired the stories” (E. A. Poe Society, “Autobiography”). His conscious was in a dark place while writing this story. “He was fighting alcoholism through his stories” (McDonald). He was using his story as self-therapy, which inspired him to write “The Cask of Amontillado”. With years of planning and plotting ones revenge; it does not make you the victim. You must ask yourself what happened to forgiveness. What did Fortunato do to deserve this torture? The entire story is somewhat s... ... middle of paper ... ...lado’” Poe Studies, Vol. V, no.2 December 1972:19 E.A Poe Society of Baltimore 2 Sept.2002.29 April 2004 http://eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1972209.htm McDonald, Trent, “Seeing Poe’s Fight with Alcoholism through his Stories “The Cask of Amontillado” T McDonald-trentsworld.com, http://scholar.google.com/scholar “The Raven: Author Biography.” Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. ENotes.com. January 2006. 28 February 2011. http://www.enotes.com/raven/author-biography. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Seventh Edition. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, Boston: Wadsworth, 2010 385-390. Print Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Seventh Edition. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, Boston: Wadsworth, 2010 385-390. Print
“The Cask of Amontillado” starts out with the narrator, later discovered to be Montresor, positioning himself as a victim of Fortunato. In the opening line, he states, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could” (714). Instantaneously one feels sympathetic towards a person that has withstood a thousand inflictions. Montresor goes on to tell a parable of sorts about vengeance, and “when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong” (715) he has lost. In this instance Poe has set Montresor apart from being at the least an unsuspecting
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).
The Cask of Amontillado is an eloquent story narrated from the murderer’s point of view. Montressor seeks revenge against Fortunato for numerous insults the reader can only imagine. In order to determine the severity of the apparent injustices, Fortunato himself must be understood. Montressor describes him as being “rich, respected, admired, [and] beloved,” as well as “a man to be … feared” (Poe 274-276). Fortunato was a flawed individual, however. His greatest imperfection was his love for wine. Fortunato’s “connoisseurship” (274) of wine resulted in his intoxicated state throughout the short story. His physical and mental capacities were impaired by his drunkenness, and as a result, he was unable to resist Montressor’s lure into the catacombs.
“The Cask of Amontillado” is a dark piece, much like other works of Edgar Allan Poe, and features the classic unreliable narrator, identified by himself only as Montresor. This sinister central character is a cold ruthless killer that is particularly fearsome because he views murder as a necessity and kills without remorse. Montresor is a character who personifies wickedness. Poe uses this character and his morally wrong thoughts and actions to help the reader identify with aspects of the extreme personage, allowing them to examine the less savory aspects of their own. The character of Montresor detailing the glorious murder he committed is a means of communicating to the reader that vengeance and pride are moral motivators that lead to treacherous deeds and dark thoughts.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “ The Cask Of Amontillado.” Heritage Of American Literature .Ed. james E. Miller.Vol.2.Austin:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1991.20.Print.
"The Cask of Amontillado" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's greatest stories. In this story Poe introduces two central characters and unfolds a tale of horror and perversion. Montresor, the narrator, and Fortunato, one of Montresor's friends, are doomed to the fate of their actions and will pay the price for their pride and jealousy. One pays the price with his life and the other pays the price with living with regret for the rest of his life. Poe uses mystery, irony, and imagery to create a horrifying, deceptive, and perverse story.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "A Cask of Amontillado." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Orlando: Harcourt, 1997. 209-14.
“The Raven.” The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill 2009. Print
Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of murder and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado”, offers a unique perspective into the mind of a deranged murderer. The effectiveness of the story is largely due to its first person point of view, which allows the reader a deeper involvement into the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist, Montresor. The first person narration results in an unbalanced viewpoint on the central conflict of the story, man versus man, because the reader knows very little about the thoughts of the antagonist, Fortunato. The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, in the dark catacombs of Montresor’s wine cellar, contributes to the story’s theme that some people will go to great lengths to fanatically defend their honor.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Cask of Amontillado." Reading and Writing about Literature. Phillip Sipiora. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2008.
Poe, E. A. “The Raven.” Bedford introduction to literature: Reading, thinking, writing. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford Bks St Martin’s. 2013. 789-791. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Ed. Wayne Franklin, Philip F. Gurpa, Arnold Krupat. New York: Norton, 2007. 1612-1613, 1616. Print.
Edgar Allan Poe?s ?The Raven? is a dark reflection on lost love, death, and loss of hope. The poem examines the emotions of a young man who has lost his lover to death and who tries unsuccessfully to distract himself from his sadness through books. Books, however, prove to be of little help, as his night becomes a nightmare and his solitude is shattered by a single visitor, the raven. Through this poem, Poe uses symbolism, imagery and tone, as well as a variety of poetic elements to enforce his theme of sadness and death of the one he loves.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique way of writing poems and other literary works. The majority of his poems involve men have become widowed; Poe does this because he too was a widowed man. “The Raven” has about three themes in which they express: grief, negativity, and depression. All of which Poe has experienced in his short 40 year life.
Poe starts out with a man, by the name of Montresor, wanting revenge on another man, named Fortunato. Most of the story takes place deep in the Montresor family catacombs. As Montresor lures Fortunato into the catacombs, he chains Fortunato up to a small hole in a wall, bricks it over, and leaves Fortunato to die. Even through the traits of anger, hatred, and revenge, as the story progresses on, Montresor, the main character in “The Cask of Amontillado”, starts to show signs of feeling guilty for wanting to murder Fortunato.