In The Cask Of Amontillado, Poe uses word choice, figures of speech, sensory details, imagery, and sentence structure to portray a certain mood in his writing, This mood is usually dark, menacing, and invokes fear in the reader. One example of this is diction. Poe uses exquisite word choice to vividly explain a setting and actions. The way Poe crafts his words and chooses which words to explain scenes in the story gives the reader a great visual. For example, “The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs” (pg, 2). This evidence shows the great word choice chosen
Has fear ever caused you to commit an act you knew was morally wrong? Fear can get a hold of someone and completely change their morals, concerns, or how they feel about certain people. It can cloud your mind and make you think irrationally in certain situations. Fear is a feeling that can harm someone emotionally and physically. In stories such as: “The Tell-Tale Heart”, ”The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Masque of Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe displays the use of symbolism, irony, and imagery to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. A recurring theme in his stories is that the main character acts irrationally or uncharacteristically because he is driven by fear.
The theme of the fear of the unknown is developed in “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Not knowing what can happen triggers mixed emotions of fear, anxiety, and anxiousness. Humans tend to fear the unknown because life never follows through with the plans that one has in mind. Knowing that unexpected events or tragedies can occur, is what makes humans so terrified of the unknown. The narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” fears the possibility of a painful death and torture. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the main character, Mr.Hooper, fears the unknown possibility of punishment for his secret sins. Edgar A. Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne both convey the theme of the fear of the
The fictional short story “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe takes place in the catacombs of Montresor’s palace, during the carnival’s climax. The story begins when Montresor, the villain of the story, vows revenge on Fortunato. Throughout the story, the author doesn't tell us what the revenge will be, but his choice of words in the details creates a mood in the reader. The author’s detailed description in the short story creates different moods in the reader like anger, satisfaction, curiosity, and victory because the chosen words connect with the audience.
Everyone must know that fear has its negative effects, but it also has its positive effects on humans. Fear can help you to be more aware and prevents harm to you and others around you since you are more cautious. However, on the other side of the spectrum, fear can bring obsession such as losing control of yourself to focus on certain people or objects, and can bring poignancy to your life. Both aspects of fear are shown in Edgar Allan Poe’s renown stories, ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,¨ ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,¨ and ¨The Masque of Red Death,¨ where all the main characters are introduced to fear, but all approach it differently. Their approach can be seen through the use of symbolism, irony, and imagery in which, Poe depicts how fear distorts the
Edgar Allan Poe’s use of literary devices to show the how fear of the characters in his stories are both helpful and harmful to them. Poe shows how the fears and obsessions of the narrators in his tales either lead to their inevitable death, or their miraculous survival. Edgar Allan Poe uses many literary devices in his texts, such as symbols, ironies, and figurative language, to show the strange and distorted ways of the characters, and the repercussion of their fears and obsessions.
Fear can be very advantageous when it comes to surviving. Fear inhibits you from doing risky actions that can put you and others in danger; it keeps you cautious and careful. Even though fear helps you when surviving, fear can harm you in life. Fear can cause paranoia that keeps you from enjoying life. You start to obsess over minimal things leading to hallucination. In Poe’s stories, the main characters experience fear, but they all handle it distinctively. Poe uses irony, symbolism, and imagery to show how fear affects the narrator’s mindset, along with their future.
In many stories and poems; such as the Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven, Annabel Lee, The House of Usher, and so many more timeless works, Edgar Allan Poe has been captivating his audiences with spine tingling thrillers through the words and style of his own twisted ways. The only way to describe where Poe’s writing belongs in history, would be classified as gothic genre. From the start of the 1800’s to present day and the future of literature, through irony, repetition, imagery, and symbolism Poe has been bewitching readers with his gore and insane writings.
Of all gothic writers, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most groundbreaking of them all. From The Cask of Amontillado, a story with integrated historical references of the time, to The Fall of the House of Usher, a deep and morbid story full of imagery. Anywhere from The Tell-Tale Heart, truly a story of both unique syntax and perspective, to The Raven, a poem full of symbols and eerie repetition. Through these and many more, Poe has been using his writing style to immerse people into his stories and poems alike since 1839. However, Poe is only able to accomplish this through his unique writer’s style, particularly his forceful imagery and meaningful syntax.
Edgar Allan Poe was a very talented writer and poet but some people may disagree. John Brooks Moore states (1926) “ That Poe was apparently first of all a journalist- neither a poet nor a writer…”(Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism 55, p.135). Most people don’t agree and say he was writer/poet due
Poe’s use of the first-person point of view in “The Cask of Amontillado” allows the reader to experience a story of murder and revenge from an atypical perspective. By using the narrator’s point of view and establishing a connection with the reader, one can see the situation as it unfolds through the mind of this callous and calculating murderer. Poe’s focus on the thoughts and emotions surrounding the protagonist, while providing few physical details of the events, gives the reader a psychological thrill as they are drawn into the mind of a
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe is an enthralling and terrifying tale of an insane and paranoid Narrator suffocating his own roommate in his sleep. Throughout the story, fear and dread is a common theme. At every twist and turn Poe creates a sense of uneasiness. Using this, Edgar Allen creates fear and dread through the Characters, Conflict, and Suspense, making the “The Tell-Tale Heart” a scary, and captivating story.
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most known attributes is his use of fear in many of his stories. He used words and images to instill the fright into his readers. He strung together scenarios that happen to his characters that encapsulates real fears that a reader could have. Poe would use fear in his stories in multiple ways. A story could relate around a certain fear. The way Poe sets up his story with the tension could create a fearful atmosphere. He did not just focus on portraying a narrator with a certain fear, he would use language that would make the reader feel fear. He packed in images of darkness and horror in order to create these atmospheres that presented fear in many different ways.
“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.” -Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe is famous in our history, because of his writings and literary contributions. Some of his contributions include, writing the first mystery story, creating detective fiction and becoming master of the short story. Edgar definitely deserves his place in history, because what would we do without mystery? Although Poe wrote and did amazing things others can think otherwise like how he married his young cousin, had an alcoholic and drug problem, and how he always wrote about death like he was obsessed with it.
Poe was emphatically influenced by Gothic writing, and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1954) with its mind-set of crawling horror and imminent death in an Italian palazzo, most unquestionably demonstrates those impacts. This and numerous other Poe stories are rich in Gothic themes such as madness, cruelty, perversion, and obsession, and feature a various rationally unequal storytellers; Montresor positively qualifies on this number. Poe, in turn, influenced later Gothic writing, especially Southern Gothic. This strand highlights Poe-like dim diversion and gives careful consideration to mind boggling, agitated, even silly characters and the general public in which they live than to the powerful themes often supported in British Gothic fiction (Poe, Edgar Allan, 2001).