Sid Amadon English IV MWF WCJC Mr. Richards 1 November 2015 Is Montresor a Monster-sor? The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story that leaves the reader sitting alone with their thoughts. The reader is left wondering about the implications of Montresor’s deed of killing his supposed best friend. Does it make Montresor crazy, or did Fortunato deserve his death, albeit gruesome and cruel? Do Montresor’s actions reflect his mental state? Is he insane, deranged, or crazy? Or could there be an explanation for what he did besides using the stereotypical and cliché excuse of mental illness for his actions? Combined with events in Edgar Allan Poe’s life having influenced how he wrote Montresor, the fact that Montresor was involved …show more content…
If one reflects on the symbol of the Montresors (a snake striking back at a foot trying to step on it), it is hard to imagine that Montresor would never have spoken a word to Fortunato about anything, since the symbol is basically saying “Do not tread on me.” Fortunato, given his status and wealth (Poe), was not the type of person to listen to something that somebody else would have to say. Had Montresor brought something up to him, Fortunato would have laughed it off, or else tried to make it seem like he was the victim and that Montresor was pulling problems out of nowhere. In fact, that kind of behavior would additionally coincide with the theory that Montresor and Fortunato had an abusive friendship, and that Fortunato was a toxic friend. According to Jenn Berman, a psychologist, a friend is not “someone who, after spending time with them, makes [one] feel bad about [themselves] instead of good; someone who tends to be critical of [one] -- sometimes in a subtle way and sometimes not so subtle; a friend who drains [one] emotionally, financially, or mentally,” (WebMD) and that happens to be how Montresor was made to feel by …show more content…
It is that dark, alluring but frightening feeling one gets when reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, that rush to make up excuses for why somebody on the news could have been so pleasant, yet had a ten year old girl locked up in their basement since she was five. The answer is that Montresor was a normal man, who was influenced by events that happened in the life of his author and his own life. There was no mental illness, no “unreliability of the narrator” to be accounted for. There was no film over his eyes preventing him from seeing the world. He knew what was right and he knew what was wrong. Fortunato had wrong him, so he had killed him. Sure, we like to think that there is no way that one of us could kill, could enjoy the thrill of locking somebody up, could get away with a murder for fifty years and love it. But we do not know that, do we? That is the answer that everybody is scared of: Any of us can be Montresor. And there is no way to tell who it