A Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask Of Amontillado Essay Example
A Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask Of Amontillado Essay Example

A Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask Of Amontillado Essay Example

Available Only on StudyHippo
  • Pages: 3 (798 words)
  • Published: November 19, 2017
  • Type: Analysis
View Entire Sample
Text preview

Edgar Allen Poe is an American short story writer, poet and literary critic. His famous short stories are based on not only horrific events, but also on psychological distortations as in "The Cask of Amontillado". In his literary critic on short story writing style, he says a short story should turn around a central event and all the other things must have use for that main point. In this short story,

his main point is the result of obsession of revenge with impunity and all the other actions serve for the protagonist's punishment against provoking. Poe uses the elements of symbolism generously and for this purpose, he benefits from mythology.

He uses Dionysos, the god of wine, to define Montresor's inner self. He uses the feast for Dionysos, the time when people get crazy and can get revenge in that chaos, to justify the murder. All his me

...

thods -symbolism, irony, pun, foreshadowing, etc. - create the subject; the psychological obsession for revenge which occurs by coming up against an indignity and having the feeling inside by not making victim's personality felt. We have a mad protagonist named Montresor and a drunk antagonist named Fortunado, which means luck-adverse to his bitter end.

Montresor begins his story by mentioning to an unknown person/thing about a vow of revenge for the insult of Fortunado. Planningly, in the feast time for Dionysos, Montresor takes Fortunado to his underground cellar by saying he'll take him at where the famous wine Amontillado is present. They have conversation including foreshadowings, ironies and puns. Drunk Fortunado gets aware of his tragic occasion only when he's walled up by Montresor among Montresor's family catacombs. With this horrible

View entire sample
Join StudyHippo to see entire essay

scene and murder style, we see how grim the mankind can be when they feel offended psychologically.

In the story, we're not able to find any specific sign proving Montresor's being insane. However, from the symbols, narrating style and the bitter end, it's not hard to label the protagonist as a mad person. "Unable to find a logical explanation of Montresor's hatred for Fortunato, most commentators conclude that Montresor is insane. Such interpretation, however, seems to make certain details in the elaborate structure of the story unnecessary and this, in turn, goes against Poe's approach to composition. "? rightly states Baraban. In addition, the dialogues including foxy implications help reader making guesses about Montresor's inner man.

For instance, when Fortunado asks The Montressors' motto Montresor replies him, "Nemo me impune lacessit" or in translation, "Nobody provokes me without punishment" and with using that expression he reflects his intention in an almost friendly manner. These signals indicates about his insane and untrustworthy nature. It's nearly clear that the protagonist is insane. Besides, psychological occurances have many types and the Montresor's mental illness has the characteristics of obsession. This obsession's degree is so high that it drives him killing the one who insults upon him with a quite extreme method and without hesitation - except from the session in the end that he feels worried for a moment when he becomes aware of the thing he has done.

Obsession has the same kinds of motivation argued by criminals in any terrene crime (envy, revenge, prejudice, sadism). In the highest degree of obsession, the person does some actions unconciously to his/her victim during the crisis of mind. After the job is

done, he/she doesn't remember anything or remembers it with great regret?. The readers watch the portrait of old Montresor confessing his action after half of a century. This confession also indicates his regret although many years passed after the terrible murder.

His regret is related to his obsession of getting revenge without punishment that nobody but him punishes himself by making him remember the event throughout his life. These obsessions making Montresor avenger and insane also creates a theme of the story as "sense of rightfullness" which refers to get the honour back with revenge by putting the violence second place and the reason first place. Moreover, as Levent Mete suggests on the basis of Erich Fromm's thesis, it's the weak one's way out and this sense of revenge is the opposite of productivity? In this short story, with the main character's actions, Poe's deep signs show us that this story is more than a horror and murder story when the stones are placed in.

References

  1. http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/The_cask_of_amontillado -
  2. Baraban, Elena V. "The Motive for Murder in 'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Poe. " collected in Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature. Volume 58, Number 2. Fall 2004.  http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Obsession_%28Spiritism%29 ? http://www. afl. org. tr/mezun/e_bulten/2005/temmuz/leventmete.htm
Get an explanation on any task
Get unstuck with the help of our AI assistant in seconds
New