Verbal Irony In The Cask Of Amontillado

Plot Summarize the main of the plot of this novel. This novel takes place in post-war Germany and begins when a sick fourteen year old, Michael Berg, is saved by Hanna Schmitz, after throwing up alongside the wall. They begin a covert love affair, that leads Berg to his lifelong infatuation of women like Hanna after she disappears for eight years. As fate would have it, while studying in law school, he observes Nazi war trials and sees Hanna as a defendant, who is then found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The court did not know that she was actually illiterate and could not have written the letter that made her end up in prison, but she would rather have been sentenced than to be seen as that.

“The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.” - Ken Kesey This quote is saying that if a person seeks revenge then they are not only hurting the person they are going after but themselves too. After all, evil never wins. We see this all the time in Disney princess movies, the “villain” goes after the protagonist

The Cask of Amontillado also uses a good amount of irony. Fortunato's name means fortunate, but after you read the story Fortunato is anything but fortunate. Before

In the beginning of the story when Montresor was dressed as an executioner and Fortunato was dressed as a joker that right there is a huge sign of foreshadowing. That showed that Fortunato was a fool and that later in the story Montresor was going to kill him. Throughout the story, Montresor is walking Fortunato through the catacombs leading him to what Fortunato believes to be Amontillado but he is really being lead to his death. As Montresor walked Fortunato through the catacombs there were bones scattered everywhere “We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs” (Poe 181). Here Edgar Allan Poe showed many signs that Fortunato’s death is close to come and that Fortunato’s high level of intoxication wasn’t letting him see anything coming.

Due to Fortunado's insult against Montresor, Montresor planned to kill him during the Italian festival season.. An example of situational irony in the story is when the reader expects Montresor to have the wine in the catacombs and he does not. When the reader leans he does not have the wine, they might begin to wonder if this is when Montresor will get his revenge. When Montresor and Fortunado are walking through the catacombs to get the wine, and Fortunado claimed he was a member of the masons, but he actually meant the group of masons who built tools is an example of verbal irony. That makes the reader wonder if Fortunado is going to use his skills as a mason to get his revenge.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe uses both verbal irony and dramatic irony. An example of verbal irony is when Montresor says to Fortunato, “‘And I to your long life,’” in the catacombs. This was when the narrator and Fortunato just finished drinking their wine and jokingly toasts to Fortunato’s life. When Montresor says this, he is actually saying “And I to your short life,” because he knows Fortunato will die soon. It is like Montresor is using sarcasm.

One form of irony present is situational irony. Situational irony can be defined as expecting one action to happen but the opposite occurs. Poe uses a play of words in a way a few times throughout. The title itself hints us the plot of the story. “The Cask of Amontillado” contains the word “cask” which is means a barrel of wine.

In “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe Montresor kills Fortunato because he insulted him. I think Fortunato was easily killed because he was drunk,full of himself,and stubborn. In Fortunato's reasons he was easily killed the main one was he was very drunk. Fortunato was a wine connoisseur so he loved to drink wine and probably drank tons each day and with carnival in town he was very drunk when he met Montresor. In “The Cask of Amontillado” Montresor even thought this was his weakness “ He had a weak point-this Fortunato-although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared”(1).

The Chilling Tale of An Unsolved Murder: The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allen Poe’s, “Cask of Amontillado”, tells a tale of a man who seeks revenge for a crime never actually spoken of. The narrator, Montresor, pursues our victim, Fortunado, by convincing him to stray away from the local festivities and providing him with the temptation of the ever sought-after, Amontillado. Of course, this highly popular wine is hidden away beneath the depths of Montresor’s property, within the dampened tunnels leading to Fortunado’s eventual crypt.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” written in 1846, he uses foreshadowing to show Fortunato’s misfortunes which eventually lead to his death. However, foreshadowing is one of the technique to the suspense that carries through the story and attains this through the language that generates a sense of place as well as foreboding. Montresor confides to the reader that he has told his servants he won’t be home until morning, knowing that they would leave to go to the carnival. As mentioned in the story that “It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend” (Poe 391). This quote is significant because Montresor’s acquaintance who is Fortunato irreparably insulted his family motto.

This is ironic because the readers know that Fortunato’s life will not be as long as he hopes it will be. He will be trapped in a niche until he dies from starvation, dehydration, or by the cough he has. I infer that Montressor would like Fortunato to have a long life in that niche so that he will suffer for the unsaid offense he inflicted upon

His total obliviousness to the situation allows Montresor to take his revenge by easily manipulating Fortunato, starting when they meet at the carnival and lasting until Montresor chains Fortunato to the enclave’s wall (432). Poe introduces verbal irony through Montresor’s manipulative words, as the entire time Montresor is leading Fortunato down into the catacombs, he continuously badgers his drunken companion about the environment being bad for Fortunato’s health, even saying, “Your health is precious” (429). The voiced “concerns” qualify as verbal irony because the audience is already well aware that Montresor does not give a damn about Fortunato’s health and is only luring him into the catacombs to exact revenge. The third type of irony, situational, is not used by Poe until the end of the story when Montresor has almost completely sealed away Fortunato in the Montresor family tomb. When Fortunato stops yelling and making noise, Montresor immediately wants to know if he is still alive, so he drops “a torch through the remaining aperture….There came forth only in return a jingling of the bells” (432).

“The Cask of Amontillado” is an ironic short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe used symbolic irony to describe who his characters were, how they dressed, and the settings in which the events took place. In this short story symbolic irony was used to define how Montresor, one of the prominent characters, sought his way to redemption by repressing his friend Fortunato to his demise. Poe’s two prominent characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” was Montresor and Fortunato. Montresor, whose name means “to show fate,” is a man with a bitter heart seeking for revenge.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” and Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” the two characters are consistently belittled by the antagonist in the stories. In “Sweat” Delia is an average housewife, but unfortunately she is in an abusive relationship with her husband named Sykes, who has a tendency to degrade Delia. Throughout the story, Sykes treats Delia horribly and towards the end of the story, Delia finally realizes that she has had enough of her abusive husband because he makes her feel as if she is not worth anything. Due to Sykes’ tendency to degrade her, Delia is considered to be a sympathetic character. The same kind of conflict affects the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Lily Martin Miss. McNally English 9 October 15, 2015 Literary devices that uplift the tone of “Cask of Amontillado” The exquisite horror in which Poe wrote, sparked a literature revolution. Poe was often perceived by many people as mad or even mentally insane. Society shunned Poe after marrying his thirteen year old cousin who later died of tuberculosis.