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The Cask of Amontillado. Edgar Allen Poe. Crazy Montressor. Acts friendly toward Fortunato, continues to “smile in his face” (174). Cold and calculating killer.
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The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allen Poe
Crazy Montressor • Acts friendly toward Fortunato, continues to “smile in his face” (174). Cold and calculating killer. • Lures Fortunato into his cellar by appealing to F’s pride and arrogance (“some fools will have it that [Luchesi’s] taste is a match for your own”) (175). • Constantly “cares” for F’s heatlh, telling him to be careful of the niter. Monty wants him to be safe so he can kill him later!!! • By telling us he wants Fortunato safe, it proves he is an unreliable narrator!
The Montressors’ Motto • Coats of arms are symbolic designs originally used to decorate shields. • This family’s coat of arms is a foot crushing a serpent who is biting the heel… • The motto is one of revenge: “Nobody attacks me without punishment” (177). Imagine this kid’s parents!!!
The trowel • A pun is a play on words. We readers discover that Fortunato is a Freemason (a member of a secret society), but Monty busts out a trowel and jokes that he’s a mason too. • You know how it ends, so clearly this is foreshadowing to the fact that Monty will wall Forty up later!
So what exactly went down? • Monty led Forty into a sort of closet in the catacombs, a deep hole in the wall that went nowhere. • Fortunato goes in, drunkenly expecting the Amontillado, and Montressor quickly locks him to the wall with a pre-set chain. • He then walls the space up, and does three creepy things: • Sits on a pile of bones and listens to Forty struggle • Thrust his sword into the cell to “quiet” Forty down • Echoes Forty’s screams with screams of his own, a la “Silence of the Lambs”
Finally, after some taunting, Montressor drops a torch into the cell, which will give Fortunato some light as he dies, and which will also burn up oxygen in the tightly sealed cell. • His heart grows sick, he claims on account of the catacombs. Could that be true? Could it be actual remorse? Could it be that he cannot torture Fortunato any longer? Yeah, that sounds about right to me, too.
In case you didn’t see… • On page 178, a brief passage in a NY newspaper explains that on July 12, 1845, a man’s description of his trip to Italy. • That guy found, in a niche inside a church wall, an upright human skeleton, apparently trapped in the cell. • A year later, Poe published “The Cask of Amontillado.” Icky, man, icky.
