Literary Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper And The Cask Of Amontillado

Literary Analysis:

“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Cask of Amontillado” Should one trust the accounts of the main characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Yellow Wallpaper?” “The Cask of Amontillado” is written by Edgar Allan Poe. In the “Cask of Amontillado,” a man named Montresor tells of a time when he uses deception to murder a man that he perceives has done wrong against him. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is in the format of journal entries that are written by a woman whose mental health is deteriorating. The deterioration of her mental health leads her to suffer from hallucinatory thinking. How reliable are the narrators? Reliability encompases the honesty the narators exhibit twoards the readers,

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman’s mental health is deteriorating, resulting hallucinatory thinking. I believe the woman’s impaired mental health to be a result of the forced seclusion that she receives at the hands of her husband. The woman describes the wallpaper in her room: “There are things in that wall-paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern (Gilman 22).” The fact that the woman suffers from hallucinations has a considerable impact on the reliability of the information. She could be hallucinating more than the movement of the wallpaper. One does not know definitively how much of her account is hallucinatory and how much is real. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor has taken extreme measures ,murder, to rid himself of the cruelty he is receiving form Fortunato. Montresor states that “ A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who had done the wrong” (Poe 11). This demonstrates how Montresor feels he has no option but to take matters into his own hands and murder Fortunato. This is not thinking that comes from one of a sound state of

In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor uses deception to lure Fortunato to his death. Montresor deceives Fortunato into thinking that he has recently purchased Amontillado. Montresor says he believes he was not actually given Amontillado. He says this knowing that Fortunato’s pride will lead him to insist that he come to Montresor’s vaults and check the authenticity of the Amontillado for him. Montresor intoxicates Fortunato further while they are walking in the vaults. Once they get to the crypt where the Amontillado is said to be, Montresor chains Fortunato to a slab of granite and closes up the entrance to the crypt. Montresor leaves Fortunato to die from dehydration and starvation. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman honestly tells her husband ,John, of the things she is experiencing. During their first few days in the new rental property, the woman tells John of her feeling that something is queer about the house. John responds by saying it is nothing more than a draught and closes the windows. As the story progresses, John says that the woman seems to be getting well. The woman starts to say that she is, “better in body perhaps” (Gilman 23) and is cut short by her husband who cares not to face the reality that her mental health is indeed deteriorating. After John is told by his wife that she sees things in the wallpaper, he