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The terror of The Cask of Amontillado, as in many of Poes tales, resides in the lack of evidence that accompanies Montresors claims of Fortunatos thousand injuries and insult. The story features revenge and secret murder as a way to avoid using legal channels for retribution. Law is nowhere on Montresorsor Poesradar screen, and the enduring horror of the story is the fact of a punishment without proof. Montresor uses his subjective experience of Fortunatos insult to name himself judge, jury, and executioner in this tale, which also makes him an unreliable narrator. Montresor confesses this story fifty years after its occurrence; such a significant passage of time between the events and the narration of the events makes the narrative all the more unreliable. Montresors unreliability overrides the rational consideration of the evidence, such as particular occurrences of insult, which would necessarily precede any guilty sentence in a non-Poe world. The Cask of Amontillado takes subjective interpretationthe fact that different people interpret the same things differentlyto its horrific endpoint.
Poes use of color imagery is central to his questioning of Montresors motives. His face covered in a black silk mask, Montresor represents not blind justice but rather it’s the Gothic opposite: biased revenge. In contrast, Fortunato dons the motley-colored costume of the court fool, who gets literally and tragically fooled by Montresors masked motives. The color schemes here represent the irony of Fortunatos death sentence. Fortunato, Italian for the fortunate one, faces the realization that even the carnival season can be murderously serious. Montresor chooses the setting of the carnival for its abandonment of social order. While the carnival usually indicates joyful social interaction, Montresor distorts its merry abandon, turning the carnival on its head. The repeated allusions to the bones of Montresors family that line the vaults foreshadow the storys descent into the underworld. The two mens underground travels are a metaphor for their trip to hell. Because the carnival, in the land of the living, does not occur, as Montresor wants it to, he takes the carnival below ground, to the realm of the dead and the satanic.
To build suspense in the story, Poe often employs foreshadowing. For example, when Fortunato says, I shall not die of a cough, Montresor replies, True, because he knows that Fortunato will in fact die from dehydration and starvation in the crypt. Montresors description of his familys coat of arms also foreshadows future events. The shield features a human foot crushing a tenacious serpent. In this image, the foot represents Montresor and the serpent represents Fortunato. Although Fortunato has hurt Montresor with biting insults, Montresor will ultimately crush him. The conversation about Masons also foreshadows Fortunatos demise. Fortunato challenges Montresors claim that he is a member of the Masonic order, and Montresor replies insidiously with a visual pun. When he declares that he is a mason by showing his trowel, he means that he is a literal stonemasonthat is, that he constructs things out of stones and mortar, namely Fortunatos grave.
The final moments of conversation between Montresor and Fortunato heighten the horror and suggest that Fortunato ultimatelyand ironicallyachieves some type of upper hand over Montresor. Fortunatos plea, For the love of God, Montresor! has provoked much critical controversy. Some critics suggest that Montresor has at last brought Fortunato to the pit of desperation and despair, indicated by his invocation of a God that has long left him behind. Other critics, however, argue that Fortunato ultimately mocks the love of God, thereby employing the same irony that Montresor has effectively used to lure him to the crypts. These are Fortunatos final words, and the strange desperation that Montresor demonstrates in response suggests that he needs Fortunato more than he wants to admit. Only when he twice screams Fortunato! loudly, with no response, does Montresor claim to have a sick heart. The reasons for Fortunatos silence are unclear, but perhaps his willing refusal to answer Montresor is a type of strange victory in otherwise dire circumstances.
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