Throughout the story Montresor and Fortunato show that they are both very clever, but one of them becomes far more clever than the other. Characterization proves the theme that Fortunato's insults make an enemy of Montresor. Montresor becomes vindictive when Fortunato’s insults start turning towards his family. Montresor’s family motto is no one punishes him and gets away with it (Fields). This gives reason to believe that honor dictated that Montresor avenge the insults Fortunato laid at his feet.
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed” (Poe). Montresor acted as if he cared for Fortunato’s health and made Fortunato think highly of his good friend Montresor because he cared about him so much. It is also very ironic how the narrator acts so worried about Fortunato’s health, while he plans to take his life within the near future. The next character trait that Montresor expresses to the readers makes the readers question if Montresor is a
This is ironic because Montresor knows Fortunato will not die of a cough. Montresor knows he is going to kill Fortunato. Montresor keeps trying to turn back, which only encourages Fortunato to continue onwards. Montresor says, “we will go back your health is precious” (238). This is
In Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” a man named Montresor has a feud with another man named Fortunato. Montresor decides to get revenge after Fortunato has consistently insulted him. Fortunato is a wine connoisseur, so Montresor uses that to trick him into going to the catacombs. While they are down there, Montresor gets Fortunato drunk, so that he will not realize what Montresor is doing. Montresor chains him and mounts a wall around him so he cannot get out.
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).
In “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe, Fortunato wrongs his friend Montresor, the protagonist. Although what Fortunato did is unknown, Montresor seeks extreme revenge. Montresor completely blindsides Fortunato by doing this as he did not know he was in the wrong. A character analysis of Montresor reveals the theme of desire for revenge through exploitation of Fortunato. Montresor’s first way of exploitation is going out of his way to speak with Fortunato in a friendly way.
When he comes across Fortunato, the victim of this murderous plan, Montresor announces having bought a cask of amontillado during the carnival, capturing Fortunato’s attentiveness. Subsequently, he asked Fortunato, since he is deeply interested and has a grand and round knowledge on wine, to make sure he has not been deluded. Once Fortunato is determined to go check out the elegant wine, Montresor escorts him through his catacomb. As they trudged along underground, Fortunato’s cough got aggravated with the thick layer of niter on the walls, and as a remedy, Montresor gave him wine, resulting him to be even more intoxicated. As Fortunato’s excitement grew at the thought of amontillado, they entered a less spacious area, where Montresor promises it to be where the exquisite wine was placed.
He is a very arrogant character, allowing himself to trust people who may very well be untrustworthy, and he is also very disliked for this and other reasons. From the beginning of the story, and nearly through the entirety of it, Fortunato was intoxicated. It was around the time of carnival season and there were many festivities so he was getting himself in the celebratory mood. Montresor had very carefully concocted how he would use this to his advantage when enacting his revenge. In their first encounter Fortunato was drunk and very sure of himself.
Throughout the narrative, the language used by Montresor shows deep emotion and disturbing passion for revenge and the punishment of Fortunato. At the beginning of the story Montresor states “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne
The story portrays how revenge is bittersweet, which shows that revenge is rarely as satisfying as we anticipate and often leaves the retaliator less content in the long run. At the beginning of the story, Montresor revealed he murdered a man named Fortunato 50 years ago. He was seeking revenge for unnamed wrongs and insults that Fortunato have made against him. Montresor wanted him dead so badly that he invented a plan