Revenge Theme In The Cask Of Amontillado

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Revenge is a topic most people are familiar with or can relate too. It’s the theme in many movies and TV shows people watch today. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado”, is a captivating story about a man getting revenge on another man for the multitude of insults and injuries he faced. The story takes place sometime during the 1800s in Italy during the carnival season which is great time to carry out a plot for revenge without the other person even realizing what is about to happen. Poe constructs a story where the main character transforms from a protagonist to an antagonist in his pursuit for revenge on another character. In the beginning of the story, the main character, Montresor, can be viewed as the protagonist. …show more content…

Montresor has utterly transformed from a protagonist to an antagonist. When they reach the end of the vaults Montresor says, “I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it” (Poe 182). Montresor successfully tricked Fortunato into following him deep underground in his vaults where he chained him to the granite and started building a wall in front of him. He had a well thought out evil plan for his revenge on Fortunato which was to ultimately bury him alive. He is no longer viewed as a protagonist because of his elaborate plan for revenge which ended in Fortunato’s death. Montresor says as he is finishing up building the wall, “My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour” (Poe 184). Montresor does not even feel one ounce of guilt for what he just did to Fortunato. He can be viewed as an extremely heartless, awful man which makes him an antagonist. Fortunato switches to the protagonist at the end of the story, considering, whatever he did to Montresor could not have been that awful to make it necessary for him to be killed. Montresor is a very twisted character, since he had a pre-meditated plan for revenge on Fortunato and did not feel guilty for killing him which all mark his transformation into an

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