The Second Day of Poe: The Cask of Amontillado

Perhaps the second most featured theme of Poe's writing was that of revenge. Many of the stories featured one person or another extracting some form of horror on their victim for a real or imagined slight.

In the situation described in The Cask of Amontillado the victim Fortunato has wronged Montresor (the narrator) in some unknown way. In obvious premeditation Montresor lures his drunk and unwary victim into the depths of his home under the guise of having a very rare wine, and every word and act leads the unfortunate further into the trap set for him. Perhaps, as the reader, one is meant to think that the man deserves it; after all, we are not aware of what ills he has done and Fortunato comes across as a brash and arrogant man. And yet, the resolute nature of Montresor's rage is clearly beyond limit.

"At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled-but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity."

This is not a well-deserved vengeance; this is divine judgment. And so it goes on, the one man leading the other on, until Fortunato enters a hollowed-out space in the Montresor crypts and once inside...

Poe rarely used bloody or overly violent acts, preferring to play on the psychological horrors that only the mind (and human experience) can conjure. In reading this short story, the reader has to wonder at how truly sinister it is that this terrible deed is being done during Carnival, where celebration and joy are at their height.  Even at the end the presence of sinister revelry remains, with the victim begging for this to all be a jest and the perpetrator gleefully taunting the man as he is entombed alive.

And, even worse, poor Fortunato won't be missed until far too late.

In pace requiescat!