Who Is Montresor Clever

In The Cask of Amontillado there are two characters who show strong character traits. Each character has their own way of showing these traits. Montresor shows his through how he deals with Fortunato’s insults. Fortunato shows his through how easily Montresor manipulates him. Throughout the story Montresor and Fortunato show that they are both very clever, but one of the 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 me and gets away with it. This gives reason to believe that honor dictated that Montresor avenge the insults Fortunato

Montresor tells us that Fortunato has a weakness, and this weakness is vanity (Poe). Fortunato believes he is the foremost expert in many things including judging the quality of wine. Montresor knows this, so he appeals to Fortunato’s vanity by telling him that he would get someone else to taste the wine. This gets to Fortunato, and he insist on being the person to help Montresor. Fortunato is determined that he has to be the one to tell Montresor whether or not he was the victim of fraud in the purchase of this variety of sherry wine (Amontillado), named after the Montilla region of Spain. Once Montresor gets into Fortunato’s head, he has him right where he wants him. CUŢITARU wrote “Consequently, Fortunato convinces Montresor that he will gladly undertake the wine-tasting task and accompany him to his vaults. The satisfied executioner thus walks by his ignorant victim to the catacombs” (CUȚITARU 204). Now that Montresor knows that Fortunato is not going to back out, he takes him into his wine vaults. Montresor’s vault is underground and in the middle of nowhere. This is a big help to Montresor because knows no one can get in the way of his plan to get revenge on Fortunato. As the story goes on this manipulation gradually turns into something else, that no one saw coming, not even Fortunato. Since Montresor was able to use Fortunato’s vanity against him, Montresor becomes

Montresor takes Fortunato to his vaults to find the rare wine called amontillado, and while there down there Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall in the vault (Poe). As Montresor and Fortunato are about to reach the destination of the amontillado, Montresor finalizes his revenge. To finalize his revenge, Montresor locks Fortunato to the vault’s wall. As soon as this happens, the reader is able to see Montresor’s murderous characteristics that he has been hiding. Fields tells us in an article,“Montresor uncovers his most illustrious plan to massacre Fortunato” ( Fields et al.). The entire time throughout the story Montresor has been coming up with a marvelous plan to seek out his revenge, and since Fortunato is easily manipulated, Montresor gets Fortunato where he wants him. Although Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall, this does not become an actual murder until Montresor starts to build a wall where Fortunato cannot escape. Before Montresor builds the wall, Fortunato thinks it is a joke and still does not realize that Montresor is leaving him to die.This shows that Montresor would actually follow through with his murderous characteristics when Fortunato insults his