Montresor Character Analysis

Readers are enticed by the theme which leaves the protagonist vengeful for much of the story. Montresor’s plot against his enemy is sparked by the irreparable insult made by Fortunato. His quest for revenge strips him from his humanity and becomes a premeditated murderous conspiracy against Fortunato. Montresor strongly desires a feeling of satisfaction. He believes that this satisfaction can be acquired through the demise of his enemy.

It is a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. First of all, he combines the narrator and the protagonist. Poe writes this story from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the protagonist tells a personal account, the general shock of the story is sharp. The narrator, in this particular story, adds to the effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed..

The murderer’s name is Montresor, and he has a brilliant, devious plan to murder Fortunato. He tells his plan step by step of how he commits this dexterous murder. How far will someone go to seek revenge? “The Cask of Amontillado” is a good psychoanalysis of Edgar Allan Poe himself. E. L. Doctorow states that Edgar Allan Poe’s life was an “unremitting disaster.

Edgar Allan Poe accentuates the feeling of guilt through his obsessive behavior, point of view, vivid visual images and allegory entities. Guilt is one of the most morally and logically powerful emotions that effect a person to pick right over wrong, good over evil. As Edgar Allan Poe writes in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator begins to sense an increasing uneasiness and regret for taking the life of an innocent man. Even though he is quite satisfied with his creation of an immaculate free murder, the crime subconsciously works against him and leads him to feel the guilt and finally admit to it. The officers had not suspected him or coaxed him into confessing; instead it was he, whom by his own unity, admitting to the crime.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is a dark and foreboding tale about a man’s insatiable appetite for revenge, and his descent into madness. The story itself is a very macabre tale, no doubt, but is there a deeper, darker meaning? Looking at the symbols and references in the story and with the tragedy that surrounded the author for most his life, it would not be too far a stretch. What this tale could really be representing, is a small insight at what Poe saw in the worst of people. Deceit, murder, simple mindedness, hate, and untrustworthiness; all very primal feelings, with the exception of murder, reside in each and every individual.

In the Edgar Allan Poe stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" the most prominent and important themes that are used are death, logic, and irony. The characters of the narrator and Montresor in these stories are both coldblooded murders that kill for selfish, and inane reasons who firmly believe that their actions are justified even though their rationalizations only make sense in their own minds. They both try to convince their audience that they are completely sane by giving their explanations about why they did what they did as well as their motives for killing their victims. In admitting how they murdered victims, who appear to be innocent to everyone besides them, they only succeed in proving their insanity. The narrator and Montresor are similar in that they both have impaired senses of judgment encouraged by perverse morals and are able to convince themselves that the horrible things that they do are justifiable.

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are credited for having horror-filled endings. Usually darkness is considered to be a good representative of evil, so the setting in “The Cask of Amontillado” is at night-time. This story deals with the jealousy, revenge and, more importantly, wounded family honor. A man named Montresor, whose name is not discovered till the end of story, is seeking vengeance on Fortunato, who has irreparably insulted him. The very first sentence: “THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge”, supports the theme of revenge (Poe 161).

Revenge is most likely the most disputable human concept to exist. While many consider it a crime to seek vengeance, others view it as rightfully restoring justice. It is not uncommon in literature for revenge to be a recurring idea, due to its controversial nature. Ray Bradbury’s “The Utterly Perfect Murder” follows the journey of a man named Doug to claim the life of a man who had tormented him in his childhood years. Similarly, the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, Montresor, seeks revenge on his friend Fortunato and eventually kills him.

This mistaken fantasy fuels the narrator’s madness, giving him more evidence that mu... ... middle of paper ... ...d the rational explanation is that the narrator wanted to kill the old man for his own indulgence. The liberation the narrator describes after the murder of the old man shows that violence was truly the key motive for his crime. Throughout both stories Poe shows that both narrators in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Hart” long for violence. He does not give clear motives for their crime; instead he leaves the detective work to the readers. After careful analysis of both stories, the reader understands that the narrators’ psychotic perceptions of reality, their domestic lifestyles, and their craving for violence, is the only reason these men commit such heinous acts without reason.