45 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Cask of Amontillado
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1846A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Montresor
Montresor is the first-person narrator, but he is an unreliable one, as he vows to carry out revenge on Fortunato without providing concrete justification. Unlike some unreliable narrators whose inconstancy arises from their own confusion or incompetence, Montresor’s untruths are fundamentally devious in nature. This is clear in his abundant lies as he tricks Fortunato into descending the catacombs for a taste of the fabricated Amontillado.
While the story centers on a murder and contains substantial mystery, “The Cask of Amontillado” is not a murder mystery in the traditional sense. Traditionally, such a mystery enshrouds the murderer’s identity, but in Poe’s story, the perpetrator—Montresor—is overwhelmingly explicit. He even gloats about the fact and describes in detail his murder methods. The real mystery is his motivations, and much scholarship surrounds this riddle. Montresor remains vague about the crimes ostensibly eliciting his vengeance, but even in their obscurity, the accusations illuminate the character of Montresor: Fortunato’s irrevocable fall from grace was when he “insulted” the narrator, a fact dramatizing the narrator’s thin-skinned pride and perhaps his paranoia. Montresor also indirectly suggests that his murderous motivations involve envy; he remarks on Fortunato’s wealth and high social standing and hints that he himself is dispossessed of these privileges.
His distinctively precarious pride underlies one of Montresor’s primary characteristics: his vengefulness, which is the catalyst for the entire story and which he expresses through deceptive calculation. His sole focus is Fortunato’s “immolation,” and each word he utters is designed to bring about the man’s doom. Montresor’s mental state may be somewhat unstable; his sense of physical reality is intact, but his premeditated actions suggest pathological malice. His ultimate task of sealing Fortunato alive in the catacombs shows a ruthlessness, and he expresses no remorse, only gleeful gratification at his own ingenuity.
Fortunato
Fortunato is the antagonist of the story. However, because the reader only ever sees him through Montresor’s highly suspect perspective—and because Montresor never wholly specifies Fortunato’s alleged crimes—Fortunato’s “antagonism” remains elusive. Indeed, the full nature of his transgressions is a central mystery in the story, but the narrator’s indictment that Fortunato somehow “insulted” him is not entirely untenable. The character does have a supercilious air, which he momentarily exposes with his condescending remark that Montresor is “not of the brotherhood” (164).
He is also a Freemason, about which he is boastful. He touts himself as a connoisseur of wines (though there are several signs that this is hollow swagger), and the text implies his wealthiness, highlighting a significance in the character’s name. However, there is also irony in the name. Unlike his name would suggest, he is ultimately not fortunate in this story, nor can his pecuniary fortune assist him in his circumstances. More irony is in the description of Fortunato’s outfit, “a tight-fitting parti-striped dress” with a conical cap and bells (162). He is dressed as a court jester—also referred to as a “fool”—for the carnival. The irony lies in the fact that Fortunato is made into a “fool” by obliviously following Montresor into the catacombs to his death.
Fortunato continues to drink wine as the story progresses, and he becomes more inebriated as he proceeds into the vaults with Montresor. He is so drunk, in fact, that he does not realize that Montresor has chained him to the wall in the catacombs until it is too late. Fortunato’s shrill screams give way to laughter as he believes Montresor is playing a wicked joke on him—yet another darkly ironic twist on the motif of jest—but this reveals that his folly persists even in the face of death.
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