The Cask of Amontillado

by Edgar Allan Poe

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat.At lengthI would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled-but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smilenowwas at the thought of his immolation. He had a weak point-this Fortunato-although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity-to practise imposture upon the British and Austrianmillionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack-but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could."

Genres: Classics, Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Gothic, School, Mystery

24 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1846

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Federico DN · Rating 3 out of 5]

See you later my friend.

Monsieur Montresor has a little grievance with the noble Fortunato. He decides to take amicable action and bury the hatchet… sort of speak.

One of the most famed and acclaimed stories by Master Poe. Its reputation certainly precedes it, and for meager twenty pages I think it’s definitely more than worth the shot, if you are curious; and classical enough.

Not a particular fav of mine tbh, but the deviousness of the ending truly peaked off my charts. Really restores my faith in humanity and all that.

It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.



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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1846] [24p] [Horror] [Conditional Recommendable]
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★★★☆☆ The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
★★☆☆☆ The Complete Stories and Poems
★★★☆☆ The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings
★★★☆☆ The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales
★☆☆☆☆ The Raven and Other Poems

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Nos vemos luego amigo.

Monsieur Montresor tiene un pequeño desacuerdo con el noble Fortunato. Decide ser amistosamente conciliador y enterrar el asunto... en cierta forma.

Uno de los cuentos más afamados y aclamados del Maestro Poe. Su reputación ciertamente le precede, y por escasas veinte páginas creo que definitivamente vale más que la pena intentarlo, si eres curioso; y suficientemente clásico.

No es uno de mis favoritos para ser honestos, pero la perversidad del final verdaderamente saltó fuera de mi escala. Realmente restaura mi fe en la humanidad y todo eso.

Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.



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NOTA PERSONAL :
[1846] [24p] [Horror] [Recomendable Condicional]
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[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is a classic tale of revenge. Since there are dozens of posts here, my review will take a particular slant: what German pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer has to say about the psychology of revenge and how the revengeful narrator in Poe’s tale relates to Schopenhauer’s insights.

Schopenhauer says we all suffer as the result of nature or chance but, as humans, we recognizes that is simply the way life works. He then writes, “Suffering caused by the will of another, on the other hand, includes a quite peculiar and bitter addition to the pain or injury itself, namely the consciousness of someone else’s superiority, whether in point of strength or of cunning, together with that of one’s own impotence.”

It’s that person to person dynamic that gives us the real sting; someone intentionally shoves or hits us, humiliates or insults us, and, for whatever reason, we simply take it. This is what happened in the aristocrat-narrator’s mind – he was insulted by Fortunato. I say ‘in the aristocrat-narrator’s mind’ since we as readers don’t know if Fortunato actually intended to insult him.

Schopenhauer sees two phases of compensation for the person who has suffered at the hands of another. 1) direct and legal – a stranger hits us and we take him to court and win a settlement 2) revenge – to deal with the psychological afterglow of the stranger’s blow. Here are his words: “Recompense, if possible, can cure the injury done; but that bitter addition, the feeling ‘and that is what I have to put up with from you’ which often hurts more than the injury itself, can be neutralized only by revenge.”

The narrator says his is not of a nature to merely threat. Being an aristocrat himself, that is, someone who is accustom to living life and having life on his own terms, he will not even consider direct or legal action or a mere threat. His first step is revenge, and a revenge where he will never be discovered or punished for exacting his revenge and a revenge where Fortunato will be fully aware he is the avenger.

Here is the payoff for the avenger as Schopenhauer sees it: “By returning the injury, either by force or by cunning, we demonstrate our superiority over him who has injured us and thereby annul the proof he gave of his superiority over us. Thus the heart acquires the satisfaction it thirsted for. Where, consequently there is much pride or much vanity, there will also be much reveangefulness.”

This is where the philosopher’s insights fit the characters in Poe’s tale like a finely made Italian glove. Fortunato is a pompous aristocrat, a man full of himself, a man who, in the course of the story, calls another man by the name of Luchresi an ignoramus since Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry. The narrator, in turn, with his vaults and wines, his family crest and family motto, is filled to the brim with pride and vanity. And as he locks Fortunato to the damp wall and seals him up in the cold, dark nave, we as readers get the feeling his revenge is as sweet as sweet can be. As Alfred Hitchcock said, “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.”

Schopenhauer’s words on the psychology of the avenger are penetrating. He writes, “But, as every fulfilled desire reveals itself more or less as a delusion, so does that for revenge. Usually the pleasure we hoped for from it is made bitter by the pity we afterwards feel; indeed, an exacted revenge will often subsequently break the heart and torment the conscience; we no longer feel the motivation which drove us to it, but the proof of our wickedness remains visibly before us.”

Poe’s tale ends with the narrator-avenger completing his stone and plaster task and feeling his heart grow sick from the dampness of the catacombs. But this is the rub. He feels his heart grow sick but it this truly caused by the dampness of the catacombs? Might the narrator-avenger experience pity and heartbreak and a torment of consciousness in the days, weeks and years to come? If he is not mad, then perhaps; if he is mad, then perhaps not. Since this is a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe, madness is always a real possibility. Thus, we can imagine the narrator-avenger spending his remaining days drinking wine from his vaults with a smug, satisfied smile, knowing there is one more pile of bones in his collection.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is my second read of Edgar Allan Poe after Raven, a few years ago, however, I found his universe enigmatic, eerie, and macabre, even on this second encounter though this time the mystery revealed itself gradually with uncovering of layers of the narrative. The world of Poe immediately pulls the reader into the narrative without wasting many words, the consciousness of the reader gets trapped under its mystifying influence on just reading a few lines. The reader could come out of the effect of such a universe, only after finishing the tale, however, it leaves his soul unsatiated, prompting him to think about what could have been, what could not.




link: source


The narrator of the story, Montresor, takes us, the readers as if we stand sacred witnesses, down his memory lane through an act of a serious revenge which he unmasks with the first words themselves. The reader may get a bit unsettled, prompted to think that what fun would be in the tale when the climax is revealed right at the outset as if he has been robbed off the satiating and sacred pleasure one reads for, however, to his pleasant surprise that’s not case, otherwise the reader might have guessed by now, we would not be reading Poe. So, Montresor puts forth his account of revenge that how he throws a bait towards Fortunato, riding upon Fortunato’s connoisseurship in wine which his friend is proud of, about eradicating his doubts regarding the authenticity of Amontillado. The lure hits upon the ego of Fortunato, as he could not keep himself away from losing the opportunity to showcase his expertise and greatness, thereby ending up entrapped in the Montressor’s ambush, carefully built around the known territory of his abode.


Though the intention of the profound revenge was clear from the onset of the tale, but the reader is given with hardly any clues about the motives behind such a compelling revenge which deals with immurement, it is deliberately left open to the interpretations of the reader as per his/ her conscience. However, some feeble hints initially come across the path of the reader about some insult or mockery of Montressor by Fortunato, but never really anything explicit is revealed. An act without motive could be the most baffling thing as it stirs the sacred balance of righteousness of society, a balance arising out of the binaries we build our lives around.




link: source


There could be multiple possible reasons which a reader could assign to the act of ultimate revenge, such as one explored above, the other could be a kind of rivalry among the two protagonists of the story as both are experts in the filed of wine. We may go to any extent possible in deciphering the motives of the act of profound effect, there are some suggestions in the tale that Montressor holds Fortunato responsible for his unhappiness and loss of respect, and esteem in the society as we always make someone or something accountable for incomprehensible things in our lives, often out of sheer jealously.


Although it could be ascertained that Fortunato leads himself into the entrapment due to his ego and his proud on being the connoisseur of wine, the turn of fates of the two protagonists could be one of the probable reasons of this act of revenge. There are some disguised elements of symbolism which reveal themselves such as when the narrator, Montressor suggested about the foot that crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel, which he explained further that no one can harm him without consequences.





link: source

The hint of sickening Montressor feels in his heart during the final sequences of this revengeful act makes you feel that perhaps is a normal human being with soul dipping in the guilt and remorse, he even reconfirms with Fortunato that they may go back if he is not feeling well, which stands witness to his humane hesitation in carrying out the act. One of the possible interpretations of the ending could be that it is just an act of insanity, without any motive, underlining a world without order which may send chilling sensations to the core of our bones. Some scholars suggested that the tale represent Poe’ s desire to revenge against the contemporary rivals, which, I guess, has subdued possibility, whatever may be the case, one thing is clear that it is tale of exploring the intertwined fates of victim and victimizer, wherein it is hard to tell who is who.





link: source

[Meghhnaa (On a Review-Writing Break!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An efficacious story on “revenge with impunity” and “premature burial”. For me, it is a perfect “story of VANITY!”. A revenge which laid hidden for half-a-century, and is revealed to the readers by the redresser & narrator (the main character), Montresor.

We as a reader turn into a confidant, to his macabre tale of revenge! The victim, Fortunato, unaware of the sinister scheming against him, is sealed in the walls of the moist family catacomb.

The story begins with the main character, Montresor, mentioning about his silent endurance of 1000 injuries and vowing a revenge with impunity-

“THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”
“I must not only punish, but punish with impunity”

Here, the insult borne, is related to the prideful knowledge of Fortunato on wine. We notice that Montresor, can get easily insulted/offended!

Montresor is quintessential of patience. Searing in revenge, he bides time for seeking revenge till the carnival season arrives, a season of “supreme madness”, when the half-drunk Fortunato, costumed as a jester with tinkling bells around his head, is all unguarded and vulnerable. Montresor decoys Fortunato into the ghastly plot, by mentioning his doubts on the genuineness of the pipe of Amontillado( a type of wine), that he recently purchased. Fortunato, who prides himself as an expert of wine, is lured into the plan. The victim’s vanity, is used as a perfect bait by Montresor! Getting hooked on, he is led to the family catacombs. The funeral atmosphere, is ironically alternated with the jingling jester bells of Fortunato! Fortunato is chained/fettered in the recess of the deepest crypt. Subsequently Montresor starts to lay a wall of stone and mortar (being a premeditated scheme, the items lay pre-prepared), and buries his enemy alive! A perfect tale of “premature burial”. While he does so, he relishes the mental torment of his victim, whom he then leaves alone in the dark, waiting in terror for his death!!

I lovingly bestow 5-stars on this story of vanity & revenge. Few of the striking factors that lured me to do so are-

1. Fortunato’s vanity of his expertise on wine, turns into his weakness and reason of death.
2. Montresor, is seen to be an overtly emotional being, who gets easily offended and harbours the insult, till he can punish his insulter with impunity. He makes sure not to be caught, but slyly brings to fruition the sinister plan.
3. Patience! Generally, when one is burning in revenge, he/she tries to expedite the revenge and get solace. But here we see Montresor waiting on patiently till the carnival season arrives. He is pretty much sane (I personally don’t see any insanity in him, but for balanced hot-headedness). He bides his own time, till the perfect hour arrives!
4. Throughout the story, he calmly and peacefully voices his murderous plan of revenge. This contrast was striking!
With the narration and the words used by the narrator, he very well comes across as a man of stature and education!
5. There is more to the story – the mold, the coat of arms, the masons, read it to explore!
6. The final revelation is – Montresor is reciting the story 50 years later, and still holds no remorse and guilt, and firmly believes that he was wronged! At the end he eerily says "In pace requiescat!" or "May he rest in peace."

The story ends at an ironic contrast of the killer’s solicitude!

My favorite part is the closing line of the story, as it holds tons of emotions and can be deciphered in various ways. The revengeful narrator/redresser, 50 years later, shows his concern for Fortunato and wishes his soul to rest in peace, is giving us his boastful narration of revenge with impunity and still not contrite, and closes on a note of solicitude and brag! He is blowing his own trumpet.

Ironically the story opens on a note of vanity of Fortunato on his knowledge of wine, and closes on another note of vanity of Montressor on his story of revenge with impunity! I LOVED IT TO THE CORE!!

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the
throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a
brief moment I hesitated--I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began
to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant
reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs,
and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of
him who clamoured. I re-echoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume
and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.”



The terror of this tale isn’t just in the final act, but in the behavior of the narrator, Montresor. I read this story several times, trying to grasp the level of madness from which he suffers. Is this truly a tale of revenge as he states to us in the beginning, or is it a tale of jealousy fueled by insanity? Poor Fortunato, who is not fortunate at all, believes he is with a friend when he ventures down into the Montresorian Vaults to taste a cask of Amontillado. It is carnival in this unnamed Italian city, and Fortunato is dressed as a fool, and he is so drunk that, though he calls himself a wine expert, I am led to believe he is more of a drunken sod than an connoisseur.

Montresor says at the very beginning of this story that he has been insulted by a ”thousand injuries,” all perpetrated by Fortunato. I’ve known a couple of people in my lifetime who considered any slight a major assault against them. It has been almost debilitating for them. Every molehill becomes a mountain in their minds. Most of us just slough those things off like a sprinkle of rain, but to thin skinned people, those slights become a torrential downpour of despair and projected animosity.

Montresor believes that Fortunato looks down upon him. There is this moment in the story when the Montresor coat of arms is revealed: a golden foot on a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit ("No one attacks me with impunity"). The question is, depending on how you read this tale, is Montresor the snake being crushed or is he the embedded fangs? Maybe, he is both. Montresor expects Fortunato to insult him, so every odd look or misplaced word from Fortunato becomes a condemnation of his friend, Montresor.

Montresor might feel crushed, but he is about to embed his fangs.



Fortunato makes a symbolic motion with his arm and discovers that Montresor is not a Mason, though Montresor insists that he is, even showing Fortunato the trowel that is in his hand as proof. Of course, showing the trowel is great foreshadowing for the final act of immurement. The fact that Fortunato does not believe Montresor is further proof that he despises him.

Montresor could have enacted his revenge anywhere. It is carnival season. The perfect time for a strangulation, a knifing, a drowning or a bludgeoning, and Fortunato would just be thought of as an unfortunate victim of some ruffians, but Montresor wants something more. He wants Fortunato to forever reside among the bones of his ancestors. He doesn’t just want him dead. He wants to OWN him forever. The revenge, if that is what this is, will never end.


Illustration by Harry Clarke.

There is this moment when Montresor realizes he isn’t feeling well. ”My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs.” At the beginning of this sentence, I’m feeling oddly relieved to discover that he is feeling some remorse, maybe the madness that has taken him over has finally been overcome by some horror at his own actions, but of course, all of that is quickly dispelled by him blaming those feelings on the dampness. There are a couple of points, too, where he suggests to Fortunato that they should turn back, but he tempered each of those suggestions with a prod that would insure that his inebriated friend would want to continue. Is this a demented way to assuage his guilt? Can he convince himself that he tried to save him, but it was Fortunato’s choice to continue to his death?

Edgar Allan Poe is most assuredly playing with your mind as he does in most of his stories. He sprinkles little clues that for the discerning reader are there to be discovered. My suggestion is to read this story a few times, and each time, hopefully, a new layer of the story will reveal itself to you. This is an excellent example of Poe and by some people considered his best short story.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short Gothic story of revenge!

Free link https://americanenglish.state.gov/fil...

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute banger of a story where Poe cranks dials blazing on the Unreliable Narrator motif all the way to 11. Walls close in around us and Montressor, metaphorically and quite literally for the latter, as we begin to realize our narrator is not all he claims to be. Hard pressed I'd say this is easily in my top 3 all-time favorite short stories.

In Cask we have the reversal of fortunes between the aptly named Fortunato and our narrator, Montressor. I love this story, it starts off playing on Fortunato’s ego and proceeds through a lot of humorous moments of Montressor toying with him giving clues along the way like foreshadowing of the deeds to come. I mean, he literally shows him the tool with which he will wall Fortunato up with claiming to be a Mason and he says his family crest is a heel crushing a snake that is biting the heel. When Fortunato asks his family motto he replies ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (no one attacks me with impunity) to which Fortunato responds ‘good!’ This is such pure gold that cartoon pirates are probably searching for it right now. But the crest is so symbolic of them as a sort of intertwined double, together in injury. While one could say Montressor is the foot stomping out the serpent that bit him, I suggest it is the opposite: the foot as the unwitting beast totally unaware it had stepped upon the serpent until too late when the poisoned fangs have already sunk in. This seems supported in the text as Fortunato seems to only casually know who Montressor is, leading you to question the ‘thousand injuries’ he has supposedly inflicted and if they were an act of malice as Montressor seems to claim or simply collateral damage. The mirroring is mocked as the pair both howl at one another, Montressor repeating his final words ‘for the love of God’ back to him. And we have catacombs in Cask very much serving the Gothic trope where mysterious passageways and hidden chambers build unease around the idea of enclosed spaces as the claustrophobia of death comes circling in around you.

I most love how—in this and many of his other stories—Poe is always addressing you, the reader. In lines such as ‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul,’ he makes us complicit but also implies that we, too, are capable of dark deeds. The monster is already in us, and he is poking it with his stick. And this story is calling for you to read it from somewhere deep down in the the chambers of your mortal heart...

‘I had walled the monster up within the tomb!’

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cotton ball eyes and teeth / You just suck me up / But your skin it’s six feet in / The room turns the color of heroin (Darkest Taste – Hurray for the Riff Raff).

I’ll admit that I'm at a bit of a loss because I don’t really have the perfect word for this book, but all I know is that it’s exactly what I was looking for! Perfect simplicity in its telling of a classic hater’s lament where a guy just can’t stand another guy for absolutely no reason. It’s a back to basics, really, because a recurring element of contemporary stories is that they seem to be obsessed with the idea of awfulness being redemptive, that there’s always a reason behind why people do the things they do, while The Cask of Amontillado dares to ask the question: “What if a guy was just nefarious and maybe even a little diabolical with it.” Now, I probably shouldn't talk about how relatable the story is because that would be rather morbid, but I understand the "on sight hatred" depicted through Montresor in that I feel it for every Twitch streamer I come across. All belching in the camera and shit, it's disgusting. Like, learn some table manners, you freak. Sorry, I know that this story is considered a benchmark of horror literature and I’m probably doing it a disservice by being so modern with my references, but just know that I tend to make light of things whenever I’m uncomfortable, and that’s exactly what The Cask of Amontillado accomplished; making me uncomfortable. And truly, isn't that the best kind of compliment you can give to horror? Besides, just know that I've already won against my worst impulses by not starting this review saying something along the lines of, "Gen Z Montresor'd be like... argue with the wall Fortunato heh heh." Anyway, this short story about a man luring his friend into the catacombs with the promise of fine wine only to then bury him alive down there took me about ten minutes to finish, and yet I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that it’ll stick with me forever. Seriously, I don’t remember the last time a single sentence shook me to my core! “I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess.” Like damn, for most the story up until this point I had been kind of laughing at the pettiness, but once I got to this point I felt sick to my stomach. And it’s compounded in the fact that Montresor himself feels a moment of sickness at what he's doing and continues to do it anyway. Oof. It's not even a line that’s particularly indicative of horror, yet it still jumped out at me in vivid and sordid detail.

So yeah, even though my first immediate line of thinking after finishing The Cask of Amontillado was to get to the bottom of it and really dissect the work as if I were reading it for a class, and I figured I'd start by asking the hard-hitting questions like, “what does it all mean? Did Fortunato actually do anything to deserve this? Can anyone do anything to deserve this? Could this have all just been a hilarious Mr. Beast prank gone too far?” But then I soon realized that I’m not so sure it even matters in the grand scheme of things. To me, that is. The pure unadulterated horror and naked fear that lies within Edgar Allan Poe's short stories exists because of their brevity and lack of context. We're usually dropped in the middle of a scene, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence, and given the bare minimum of information to chew on before we even realize it's almost time to wrap it up. I seriously love it! We can analyze all day, sure, but sometimes it's more emotionally resonate if we to just let it speak for itself. As a celebrated piece of fiction for hundreds of years, I'm sure there’s not much that I can say about this story that hasn’t already been picked apart by this point anyway, and I wonder when was the last time someone read it as literature solely meant to entertain? I mean, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m not smart enough to appreciate the nuance, but truly… I’d probably like it considerably less if Edgar Allan Poe were still around to debunk theories and talk about the real intention behind this thing or that thing. Ideally, art should be able to stand on its own without James Gunn’s Twitter fingers going atwitter needing to respond to literally every comment he finds. Besides, half the fun is in the interpretation, take that away and you get a Noah Baumbach situation where he just uses Laura Dern as a mouthpiece for his own self-congratulatory opinions where he literally just spells out what he wants the audience to think when they walk away from his overindulgent films. So yeah, even though it’s a lot easier to make fun of James Gunn and Noah Baumbach to escape going too in-depth on a story that explores the deepest recesses of our intrusive thoughts, there’s no doubt in my mind that if nothing else, The Cask of Amontillado is here to cast an especially grotesque and haunting picture for the late-night ponderers out there. Oh hey, that’s the word I was looking for! “Haunting,” this short story was haunting! And if I knew anything about wine, I'd end this by making a clever observation about it being perfectly distilled horror bottled up in only a few concise pages... or you know, something like that.

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typically this is considered a tale of revenge. I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that it's not. The only notion we have of revenge--of the narrator, Montresor, actually being wronged--comes in the wonderfully vague opening sentence: "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." It's Montresor himself who insists this is a revenge tale, but of course he's the ultimate unreliable narrator, so we shouldn't take him at his word. Notice that we get not a single detail concerning any of these injuries or insults. Typically you'd expect someone plotting revenge to stew over all those little details ad nauseam. Instead, we only know that Fortunato is a wine connoisseur and that "[i]n painting and gemmary Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack." It seems that, at some level, Montresor simply doesn't like Fortunato (or perhaps doesn't like all Italians, especially Fortunato) and decides to kill him for no other reason than that. You also get the sense that Fortunato is more successful than the narrator (his name, Fortunato, isn't particularly subtle), so perhaps the killing is simply the result of jealousy. There's also that wonderful scene where Fortunato makes a Masonic sign, which the narrator doesn't understand (and call "grotesque"), and Montresor replies by producing a trowel from beneath his clothes and saying he's a mason, too. A grim joke, but one that points again to the jealousy burning inside him.

OK, enough argument! The most important point is that this a wonderfully macabre tale that reprises several of Poe's major themes. I won't spoil the ending. I'll just say that it's a tale that leaves you thinking long after the reading is done. Not just thinking, but feeling: the damp caverns, the piles of bones, and the ever thickening "nitre" that "hangs like moss upon the vaults."

[Nayra.Hassan · Rating 3 out of 5]

لا يحمل الحقد من تعلو به الرتب *
*و لا ينال العلا من طبعه الغضب

ما بين الحقد و الانتقام يؤرجحنا ادجار بقسوة شديدة في احدى اقوى قصص الدفن حيا و اكثرها رمزية

مونترسور رواي القصة يحكى لنا قصة انتقامه الاخير من فورتناتو صديقه الثري خبير النبيذ الذي اهانه مرارا
و من اسمه ندرك كم ان "فورتناتو "موفق و مثير لحسد الكل
فها هو عدوه يعدد لنا محاسنه اثناء استدراجه لحتفه ..بدلا من تعديد اساءاته اليه ؛و هو ما يبادر اليه المنتقم بالطبع اثناء تنفيذ انتقامه
..لا ان ينفذه ببرود السفاحين المصابين بالبكم

و بخيال قادم من جهة غير ارضية يرسم لنا ادجار صورة بصرية مغرية جدا لكل فناني العالم؛ ليرسموا الضحية في زي المهرج و المنتقم في زي قاتم كئيب و تحيطهما الجماجم المغروسة في جدران الكتاكومب الرطب الذي شهد معظم احداث القصة ؛ و بالفعل كانت قصة برميل امنتلادو هي اكثر قصة حظت برسوم لادجار بو


و من رؤيتي الخاصة جدا ؛اعتبر هذه الاقصوصة القاسية تحذير سابع او ثامن من ادجار عن اضرار الخمر و الثمالة

و لنتذكر
إثنان يهتمان بكل تفاصيلك
من يحبك بشدة و من يحقد.عليك بشدة

و عندما تحفر قبرا لعدوك ؛لا تنسي ان تحفر لنفسك قبرا معه

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite Edgar Allen Poe story! Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:

Our narrator Montresor, an Italian nobleman, explains ― in a suspiciously vague way ― how his friend Fortunato has mortally offended and insulted him. Montresor sets himself on a course of implacable revenge … but he wants to do so in a way that Fortunato understands that Montresor is the source of revenge, but without being caught or punished.

Montresor and Fortunato meet during a carnival festival ― which at first seems by chance, but then you find out that Montresor has set up the situation so that all of his servants are gone (he told them that he would be out all night, but that they were NOT permitted to leave, and counted on the lure of the carnival to do the rest). Montresor tells Fortunato that he has bought a cask of fine Amontillado sherry at full price, but he isn’t certain if it’s the real thing. Fortunato, a connoisseur of old wines, volunteers to taste it.

And so the two go (Montresor first donning a mask) to Montresor’s palazzo and then into the depths of its damp catacombs hung with white webs of nitre, Montresor protesting all the time that his friend really shouldn’t come, but all the time luring him in like an evil-hearted spider …



“The Cask of Amontillado” is one of Poe’s truly memorable horror stories, a tale of vengeance, and more enigmatic and complex than it appeared to me on first read, many years ago. Poe, as always, is great at atmosphere and setting. It’s a tense revenge tale with some black humor, and some interesting ambiguities about guilt. There are so many ironic and symbolic details that add depth to the story: The irony of Fortunato’s name, the “supreme madness of the carnival season” that echoes the narrator’s mental state, the fool costume that Fortunato is wearing at the carnival, and many more. “Montresor” could be translated from French as “my treasure”; it leads one to mull over what exactly is the narrator’s treasure.

Free to read online many places, including here.

One of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories, Usher II (part of his Martian Chronicles story collection) is in part a tribute to "The Cask of Amontillado."

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia de vinos. Una historia de soberbia y traición. Una historia de venganza y muerte.

A story of wines. A story of pride and betrayal. A story of revenge and death.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cask of Amontillado (1846) is a brief story by Edgar Allan Poe. It is told by an unreliable narrator, just as "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-tale Heart" are. It includes a favourite theme of Poe, which he had also used in "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Black Cat" (1846) - that of walling up alive.

The story is entirely about revenge, the bottle of sherry merely being a device to entrap the victim. Although there is a theory that the story is based on a rumour circulating when Poe was in the army, it is also thought to be a story spitefully directed at another writer, Thomas Dunn English, with whom Poe was having a feud.

[Thibault Busschots · Rating 3 out of 5]

The protagonist invites a wine connoisseur called Fortunato into his dark and damp family crypt filled with death to sample some Amontillado sherry wine. But not for a pleasant drink among friends. The protagonist’s thoughts are filled with a thirst for vengeance.


A decent little story about revenge. It’s very straight forward, maybe a bit too much. The setting’s quite atmospheric. Though it’s not properly explained why the protagonist wants to take revenge in the first place, which does hinder the story a little bit.

[Steven Serpens · Rating 3 out of 5]

CALIFICACIÓN REAL: 3.5 estrellas

En este relato conoceremos a Fortunato, un simpático pero desafortunado personaje que aparentemente tuvo la mala suerte de ofender e insultar a la persona equivocada: a un tal Montresors. Este rencoroso individuo es quien protagoniza la presente historia y, aparte de ser tan vengativo, también presenta una más que clara y evidente perturbación mental.

Esta vez, estamos ante un relato que cuenta con lo justo y necesario, ya que no se le perciben páginas que estén demás. Eso sí, desde un comienzo queda en evidencia qué ocurrirá, ya que el mismo protagonista indica lo siguiente: «Me vengaría en el tiempo, esto estaba definitivamente decidido y, por lo mismo, quedaba excluida toda idea de riesgo. No solo debía castigar sino castigar impunemente». [...] «Tal como lo planeé, seguía sonriendo en su presencia sin que él advirtiera que mi sonrisa se originaba en la idea de quitarle la vida».
La verdad, a mí no me molesta para nada la idea de que en las primeras líneas del texto se revele el desenlace de esta historia. El problema es su falta de contexto: ¿cuán grave tuvo que haber sido la ofensa de Fortunato hacia Montresors para que este último decida matarlo con una planificación muy cuidadosa en torno al método e inclusive, que fantasee morbosamente de la situación? No siento que el dejar cosas así para la imaginación e interpretación del lector sean aplicables en este caso.

Por otra parte, parece que esta historia está narrada durante la vejez del victimario, ya que se indica que ha pasado medio siglo desde el hecho de sangre, y que todo se ha mantenido exactamente igual en las catacumbas desde entonces.
Algo más que llamó mi atención a diferencia de otros asesinos de Poe, es que éste muestra una cierta vacilación en algunos momentos, y de una forma más notoria en comparación a las de otros protagonistas. Esto no deja de ser algo llamativo e interesante cuando ocurre, porque le da más humanidad a este personaje, haciendo que se sienta más orgánico, a pesar de la falta de contexto que ya mencioné y que se contrapone en cierta medida con esto último que acabo de indicar. A lo mejor sin estas vacilaciones, Montresors sería otro personaje genérico más, solo que con el rol protagónico.

De cualquier modo, esta es una lectura ágil, entretenida y hasta divertida por momentos, además de ofrecernos una buena y atrayente ambientación para su desarrollo. Pero, he visto que muchos critican el spoiler del desenlace que se da al comienzo, lo cual no es una queja para mí. Las únicas queja de peso que le doy es la falta de contexto, para intentar comprender al protagonista y sus motivaciones —aunque tampoco es que vaya a haber mucha lógica dentro de la misma locura—; y que le faltó algo de crudeza o brutalidad a la trama y a su conclusión, ya que carece de esa potencia, sintiéndose muy light como título a nivel general. Creo que no tengo mucho más que agregar o decir al respecto.

Ahora, nuevamente me encuentro en problemas para poder calificar, ya que siento que hay que hacer alguna especie de petición colectiva o algo así, para que por fin Goodreads se digne en agregar las tan clamadas estrellas intermedias. Y si menciono esto es porque califico con 3.5 estrellas a El barril de amontillado, por ser una obra muy ligera, amena y simpática. Recomendada para todos quienes deseen leer algo rápido, conciso y cumplidor.

Para no perder el hilo con las demás reseñas que he hecho sobre las obras de Edgar Allan Poe:

1) El gato negro, cuya reseña está bugueada en el feed de Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2) El cuervo, el único poema que he reseñado de este autor: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3) Narraciones extraordinarias, recopilatorio en donde reúno a los 28 relatos que he leído de Poe, además de incluir un top personal al respecto; junto con dar mi opinión en profundidad sobre él como autor: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review
4+ of 5 stars to The Cask of Amontillado, a Gothic short story written in 1846, by Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps one of my favorite of all Poe's works, this literary genius stimulates one of everyone's deepest and scariest fears: to be buried alive. Though there are several macabre options to consider, in this fantastic tale set in Italy, a man is buried alive behind a brick wall. Poe goes to great lengths to describe the process, the emotions and the setting. As a reader, you are entranced in the action, caring little about the characters or the reasons why it's happening. You read each line in fear, wondering how it will all end.

What I love about Poe's work is his ability to draw readers into a darkness that permeates all our senses. As you read the story, all five of your physical senses react to the vengeance plot he's fabricated... from the damp and dank smell of the dirt to the scraping of the mortar against the bricks, your body will twist and turn at the thought of what lengths mankind will when they are angry and hurt.

Take a chance on this one... it'll give you a great sense of who Poe was both as a writer and as a villain.

About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 4 out of 5]

- قصة ظاهرها الإنتقام وباطنها الغيرة! الغيرة ممن هو افضل منه، وحين تبدأ الغيرة بالغليان على حطب الجنون، فالنتيجة ستكون القتل كما حدث في هذه القصة القصيرة! الأسلوب سلس، سوداوي، مفعم بنفس مريضة قاتمة، لكنها تجيد التخطيط للإيقاع بفريستها، مثل"الأرملة السوداء".

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark and disturbing tale of revenge served cold...and damp...and chained. The protagonist certainly must have been quite vexed by Fortunado!

[Helga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must not only punish, but punish with impunity.

A short story about revenge and murder.
But what is the crime? Is the revenge justified? Does the punishment fit the crime?
The above aren’t contemplative, rhetorical or philosophical questions. I am asking, because right at the beginning we are told by our (maybe crazy, possibly unstable??) narrator that he has decided to take a fatal revenge on his friend; that he has been wronged.
Poe doesn’t tell us what the narrator’s grievance is.

My relationship with Mr. Poe is somewhat strained and I can’t see his wow-ness where others see his mastery and genius. Therefore don’t pay any attention to my rantings regarding Poe or Conan Doyle.
I am and always will be a diehard Christie fan, though. 🕵️‍♂️

[Praveen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My eyes are heavy. I am trying to sleep. Sleep is evading me. Restlessness is here.

This is a new place. I have come here for some time. It's an outskirt of a small town in northern India. I will stay here for some days. It’s night. It’s almost 11 o clock at night. Here is silence everywhere. Complete tranquility. Just beyond there is a concrete factory. Some machine is still working there. A faint grinding sound is reaching my room. There is no other sound outside. It’s dark. Dead dark. ….No… Wait… There is one more sound… tick ...tick.. tick…it’s a clock on the wall. The needle of the second is making a noise every second. I am trying to sleep. It’s not coming.

Though, I am tired. Mr. EDGAR ALLAN POE is coming to my mind. I don’t know why? I wish to read him. It’s a perfect ambiance. Though I know my brain is not focused. I am exhausted. I still long to read him. I am rolling over his titles on my iPad. I want something short. Here it is. This one is just 12-pages. I have opened it. It is THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. I am reading this. I have finished it. It is really short. In a few pages, only dialogues. A quick read. I think I have sensed the story. This is not that great. Just OK! Now sleep is overcoming me. I am sleeping. GOOD NIGHT!

This is the next morning. I have woken up early. I am leaving the bed. The story is flashing in my mind. But it is blurred. It is very filmy, unclear. My mind is fresh. I want to write a short review on GR. I will give it three-star. Not more than that. I am thinking. I am ready to write, first on paper but I am not getting anything. I remember an avenger had taken revenge. But I am feeling nothing. What was the story? I knew that at night. But I want to visualize! I am not able to. Did I read it in delirium? I decide I will read it again after the bath. I read it again. This time I am keeping a lexicon alongside. I am jotting down these words arrowing them like an uninteresting baby, on a paper.

VAULT---> VINTAGE---> PALAZZO---> SCONCES---> FLAMBEAUX---> CATACOMB---> PUNCHEON---> FLAGON---> MASON---> TROWEL---> CRYPT---> STAPLES---> PADLOCK---> A RAPIER

Can you see the sequence of these words is hinting at the storyline? I am minting them one by one in my mind. It is over. OK. Now I know how it was happening there. I can now visualize. I was missing the Italian flavor. A VAULT was something else for me at night. It is a true Italian word. It is clear now… Same with VINTAGE… It was something else at night. In the morning it became wine, an Italic wine. I had forgotten the story was based in Italy. In the same way, I know all of them now, the Italian way! While re-reading the story, this quote is becoming more and more clear to me now.

“I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

I am ready for the review now. Here I am writing it. IT’S NOT A THREE-STAR. IT’S A FIVE-STAR NOW. I think this story is not only about horror. This story did not terrify me at all. I read it twice. I was not affrighted both times. It looked lyrical. It was all jest until the last. It was like a drama. I think I should not call it a story. It is just an act. I think the quote mentioned above in the very first part of this story settles the purport of the story.

The tale is something like this.

Two men, one mortifies, the other disparaged, both moving on, side by side, unaware of each other’s intentions, their arms intertwined as if of two best buddies. One is drunk in Italian vintage wine. Other is also drunk but in vengeance. Both smiling, making jokes, concerning each other, the disparaged one taking all subtle cares of the mortifier, slowly and willingly both reaching to the remotest part of a crypt of a catacomb, and among all this merriment, an act of retribution is performed by the avenger, in such a way that it could only be perceived 50 years later. The perfect execution!

In my comprehension, this is not just about horror or a tale of retribution. It’s is something else. I am lacking the exact word on how to define it. I think this is a FARRAGO. This is an interfusion of the art of narration of Poe with the subtlety of a perfect crime execution. Perhaps this story is a mélange of horror, retribution, and psychoanalysis. But whatever it is...It is something unprecedented!

THANK YOU, MR. EDGAR ALLAN POE!

I will read to you again after going back to my place!

[KSS · Rating 3 out of 5]

احتملت من فورتيناتو ألف مساءة ومساءة، لكنه أجترأ على بالإهانة فأقسمت لانتقمن منه.
دفعتنى هذه القصة القصيرة للبحث والقراءة عن أركان الجريمة وأهم دوافع ارتكاب أى جريمة، واكتشفت أن كتب القانون تستهل دوافع الجريمة بــ (حب الانتقام والثأر من الآخرين) فلا عجب إذن أن نجد القصة التى بين أيدينا عن الانتقام والثأر معاً، هنا مونتريزور صاحب الجاه والسلطان المُنقضى تدفعه الغيرة من صاحب الجاه والسلطان الحالى لدفنه فى قبو قصره حياً، الانتقام أيضاً كان حاضراً فجلسات الأغنياء لا تخلو من السمر واللهو الزائدين فمن المحتمل أن فورتيناتو أهان صديقه قليلاً فقرر صديقه أن ينتقم منه بعدما تجمعت لديه دوافع عدة كالـــــغيرة من سلطان وجاه قائمين وإهانــــــات متكررة فقرر مونتريزور أن يستدرج صديقه إلى قبو بحجة تجربة نبيذ الأمونتيدللادو.
مونتريزور
الحية التى تلتف حولك لتعرز ناباها فى عنقك، كما عرف شعار عائلته
قدم عظيمة من الذهب فى حقل لازوردى، والقدم تدوس حية قائمة وناباها مغروزان فى الكعب
إذن هى جينات تعيش داخل كل منا، فمنا المطمئن للناس والمستأنس بهم ومنا من هو مونتريزور الحية التى تلتف لتلدغ فى مكان مميت.
فورتيناتو
لا أمن لمن يستفزنى
سيكرهونك لأنك محبوب وعزيز ومُكرِم وسعيد وستطمئن لهم لأن هذه عادتك ونيتك الصفية الصافية.
المطمئن بالناس والمستأنس بهم، يُعامل الناس جميعاً على أنهم أنقياء أصفياء حتى يثبت العكس، للأسف قليلاً ما يجد الوفاء من الناس فى المقابل فعلى الدوام سيجد من يلتف حوله وينصب له الشرك المناسب مستغلاً حبه لشئ ما أو شخص ما ويلدغه لدغة مميتة.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic, but may be a tough read for anyone with clautrophopbia

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I must not only punish but punish with impunity”

Have you ever thought how revenge could be at its worst? Well, Poe with his dark ingenuity gives us a splendid lesson. A scary glimpse to the idea of revenge carried with meticulous precision. Poe presents us a placid and dark story that is deception at its finest.

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.”

Did Fortunato indeed insulted our narrator? For no explanation is given to the cause, the reader just hears the voice of the narrator and his suposed humiliation. Would you simply take an insult, or avenge yourself? As I was reading along, I wondered: is this only a threat, a scare or will the narrator only be satisfied with the inexorable demise? But there are omens, if we wish to recognize them.

“A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

First I read calmly until suddenly the dark climate hit me, and I wondered: how did it all comes to that? What an atmosphere of foreboding Poe is able to conjure with so few words. The scary image of death in progress.

“I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.”

The story is placid and dark as starless night sky. Deception at its finest interpretation. Something you will not see in any other story, as far as I can remember. The image of the impetus of death unfolding, a gradual build up to the very end.

[Mohsin Maqbool · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cask of Amontillado is one of Edgar Allan Poe's darkest tales and loved by people all over the world as it is Gothic horror at its best.
The narrator, Montresor, opens the story by stating that he has been insulted by his acquaintance, Fortunato, on numerous occasions and he wants to exact revenge. However, he wants to do so in a measured way without raising any suspicion. He knows that Fortunato is a connoisseur of wine. He approaches Fortunato during a carnival wearing a mask of black silk. He tells Fortunato that he has bought some wine that could be Amontillado, a light Spanish sherry. Fortunato (Italian for “fortunate”) wears the multi-coloured costume of the court jester, including a cone cap with bells.


Is the shadow of the rat
A sign of soon-to-come death?

Montresor is an extremely shrewd person and wants Fortunato to play into his hands, so he tells him that if he is too busy, he will ask a man named Luchesi to taste the wine. Fortunato scoffs on hearing this. He claims that Luchesi could not differentiate between Amontillado and other types of sherry.
Fortunato is eager to taste the wine so that he could determine for Montresor whether it is truly Amontillado. Fortunato insists that they go to Montresor’s vaults. So the latter quickly takes the former there. He had already told his servants that he would return in the morning and he wanted none of them to leave the house during his absence. He knew too well that they would consider this to be an excellent chance to go the carnival, leaving the house all for himself.


Is this the passage to death?

How will Montresor take revenge on Fortunato once they are in the underground vaults? Or will his conscience get the better of him, making him change his mind at the last minute? Will it be Fortunato who will be fortunate enough to read Montresor’s mind and make good his escape in the nick of time? Read the story and find out yourself.


So much to fear
Doomsday is near.

Colour and costume play a major part in this short story. Montresor wears a black silk mask. A mask acts like a shield covering one’s true motives. Black is mostly associated with evil, dark and the underworld. Silk is smooth which could also allude to a smooth and slippery person. The vaults are underground which is pitch black, so they could be easily associated with the underworld where sinister and macabre things take place.
Fortunato is wearing a multi-coloured costume of the court jester. Multi-coloured could stand for a lively person, which Fortunato is. However, court jesters are renowned for their buffoonery and foolishness. There is every likelihood that Fortunato might turn out to be a fool and easily lured into Montresor’s trap.


Edgar Allan Poe
With the fab four.
Those who want more
Head for the vault door.

[Sanjay · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10

Loved the way Poe portrayed this tale of revenge; climax was unexpected but left me quite satisfied.

[Janete on hiatus due health issues · Rating 5 out of 5]

An audiobook in Portuguese. "The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year (possibly sometime during the eighteenth century) and concerns the deadly revenge taken by the narrator on a friend who he claims has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement."

[Isa Cantos (Crónicas de una Merodeadora) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just an okay short story with a very eerie ending.

[Maliha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Montresor: You only hate me because I lured you into a wine cellar on the promise of a fine vintage and then left you to die in a wall. Grow up.

Honestly I don't think I get enough credit for all the people I DIDN'T wall up in the wine cellar due to an unspecified personal grudge.

[sarah سارة (free me) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark Classic Books>>>

Edgar Allan Poe's death filled stories are the reason I get by 🥰

5/5 🌟

[Traveller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbometer: 8-9 out of 10
One of the entries in my “list of most disturbing short stories ever”, which I am thankfully almost at the end of.
====================


In a way, writers of dark fiction hem themselves in to a large extent. People who are familiar with their work, come to expect horror from them, and so their reputation tends to blunt the effect of the horror they attempt to inflict on their readers. So my disturbometer rating doesn’t mean that nothing awful happens in this story – something awful certainly does happen. And, as with many of Poe’s tales, the biggest horror lies in the twisted mind of the narrator.

EDIT (Dec. 23 2021) : Taking the paragraph above in mind, in the comment section below, GR friend Richard linked to a song on Youtube named The Cask of Amontillado, by The Alan Parsons Project.

That song kind of extracted the bare essence of this story for me: One friend is killing another, in a truly horrible way, because of his own piqued feelings and sense of being wronged, along with a healthy dose of jealousy regarding the friends wealth, happiness and good fortune. The story doesn't quite tell us if Fortunato got his good fortune at Montresor's (the killer narrator's) expense. But what we DO get from the story, is the manner of Fortunato's murder, the modus operandi - right from the moment that he is unsuspectingly led into the catacombs under a false pretext and with a scary amount of guile, to the point that he is trapped - and immured forever.
Fortunato might not have been a very nice person himself, and that much the story does make clear, but it needed the song for me to realize the full horror that Fortunato must have experienced at the end, and caused me to up my disturbometer from 7 to 8-9.

Regarding the narrator, one has to ask yourself what kind of person smiles and fusses over a person that they are purposely leading to an extremely unpleasant death? What kind of person feels hatred for another person, but yet expresses friendship and concern towards that person? An extremely twisted and a pretty creepy kind of person, that’s for sure. So once again, as is often found in Poe's works, we have an unsympathetic protagonist.

The story takes place during an Italian carnival, so there are crowds on the streets, wearing costumes and masks while drinking and merrymaking, which adds a lurid, unreal quality to the background setting of the tale.

The story takes a sinister turn when our narrator, on the pretext of judging the quality of a casket of Amontillado*, leads his inebriated friend into the catacombs of the Montresor family mausoleum, where, as was the custom in ye olden days, the bodies of the dead were placed, usually in caskets, into niches made in the walls. But the wood of caskets can get old and rot in the damp, thereby partly or wholly exposing its morbid contents. So it's a suitably macabre setting, with skeletons serving as silent witnesses to the proceedings. Said proceedings being, Montresor taking truly diabolical revenge on his so-called friend, Fortunato. (Read the story to find out exactly how - it's very short.)

As part of my edit after hearing and watching the song on Youtube, I've also reflected on what Montresor was figuratively doing to Fortunato. He was basically removing Fortunato from sight completely, and was in a very literal way, removing him from society, blocking him from stealing Montresor's "shine", and removing him from the scene both literally and figuratively. Did that work out for Montresor? Well, it is hinted at that Montresor might have had his regrets after all, but as with all unreliable narrators, one never knows.

In my first reflections upon this story, I was thinking: “Ha, Poe has set a story of revenge in a land ripe with vengeance, the land that spawned the Mafia, an organization that receives its power from the threat of revenge." But then, revenge is also generally speaking a very Latin thing, isn’t it? The Spanish are culturally very much into revenge as well, and here my mind moved to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a tale about a revenge in defense of an honor system that was so culturally ingrained, that bloody, deadly revenge was the expected thing when the honor of a family was sullied according to the norms of that culture.

‘Honor’ (which is a culturally contextual thing) was also very popularly 'defended’ by having duels, not just by the Spanish, but by Europeans of all stripes in the early nineteenth, the eighteenth, and earlier centuries, and honor, especially family honor, was a legitimate thing to defend to the death not just in Europe/Russia, but in the Middle-East as well. Ok, so notions of ‘honor’ and revenge is a pretty universal occurrence, especially in patriarchal settings.

Be that as it may, many writers like to set their tales of “revenge in order to defend the family honor” in Italy – as did Shakespeare with his tragic Romeo and Juliet, and Guy de Maupassant with his story “A Vendetta”. And so it is with The Casque of Amontillado. We are never explicitly told why the narrator wants to take revenge, beyond hints that personal pride and possibly family honor is involved.

The narrator, a member of the Montresor family, which was once rich and illustrious, but had in the meantime fallen from grace, says to his ‘friend’ Fortunato : “You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was.”
This seems to hint at the idea that the narrator somehow blames Fortunato for his current lack of happiness – whether it be by direct or even only implied insult. But we never get to know the exact nature of this insult, and it is implied that Fortunato, an arrogant big-mouth, already knows the reason, since he never asks why he is being punished, but seems to automatically grasp, finally, at the end, that this is what is happening.

Another hint that this revenge might be inspired by defending family honor, is that the family crest of the Montresors features a foot trampling on a snake which is biting the same foot in the heel, with the motto: No one can harm me unpunished.

I’ve seen suggestions that Poe wrote this tale as a ‘revenge’ tale against another writer who lampooned Poe and made fun of him. If this were true, it certainly then makes sense that Poe would leave the exact nature of the insult over to the imagination.

However it may be, as usual, Poe doesn’t spoonfeed us on all of the details – he makes subtle hints and leaves the reader to sweat it out as to exactly what is going on. For all we know, this narrator, as seems to be the case with a few of his other narrators, may also be insane. I read the story as a part of a Poe collection named Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and yes, mystery there is aplenty.




*Amontillado is a variety of sherry wine characterized by being darker than fino but lighter than oloroso. It is named after the Montilla region of Spain, where the style originated in the 18th century, although the name "Amontillado" is sometimes used commercially as a simple measure of colour to label any sherry lying between a fino and an oloroso.

Some sources say a 'pipe' of Amontillado, would be a huge round wooden casket of about 130 gallons, or 492 liters containing the wine, other sources say a pipe can vary from 350 to over 600 liters. It seems partly to have varied over time, in the past 200 years or so. I suppose it also varies from region to region. It's one of those big caskets that you tend to see in wine cellars, in any case.