Cask Of Amontillado

♦ OVERVIEW ♦

"The Cask of Amontillado" was first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book, a monthly magazine from Philadelphia that published poems and stories by some of the best American writers of the nineteenth century, including Nathaniel Hawthome, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The story next appeared in the collection Poe's Works, edited by Rufus W. Griswold, Poe's literary executor, in 1850. By the time Poe wrote this story, he was already nationally known as the author of the poem "The Raven" and of several short stories collected in a book called, simply, Tales (1845), These earlier stories were widely reviewed and debated by critics who found them brilliant and disturbing, and their author perplexing and immoral. Although "The

Cask of Amontillado" was not singled out for critical attention when it appeared, it did nothing to change the opinions of Poe's contemporary admirers and detractors. Like Poe's other stories, it has remained in print continuously since 1850.

The story is narrated by Montresor, who carries a grudge against Fortunato for an offense that is never explained. Montresor leads a drunken Fortunato through a series of chambers beneath his palazzo with the promise of a taste of Amontillado, a wine that Montresor has just purchased. When the two men reach the last underground chamber, Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall, builds a new wall to seal him in, and leaves him to die. Several sources for the story have been suggested in the last century and a half: Edward Bulwer-Lytton's historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1843); a local Boston legend; a collection of Letters from Italy; and a real quarrel Poe had with two other poets. Wherever Poe got the idea and the impetus for "The Cask of Amontillado," this story and Poe's other short fiction had an undisputed influence on later fiction writers. In the nineteenth century Poe influenced Ambrose Bierce and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. Twentieth-century writers who have continued in the Poe tradition include the science fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft and the horror author Stephen King.

According to Vincent Buranelli, Poe's short stories also influenced the music of Claude Debussy, who was "haunted" by the atmosphere of Poe's tales, and the art of Aubrey Beardsley, as well as the work of other composers and artists in the United States, Great Britain, and Europe. Poe was criticized in his own time for depicting a crime with no apparent motive and a murderer with no apparent remorse. For 150 years these themes have continued to challenge readers, who are both attracted to and repulsed by Poe's creation.

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As the story opens, an unnamed narrator explains, "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." There is no hint as to whom the narrator is speaking or writing, and the "thousand injuries" and the "insult" committed by Fortunato are never described. Nevertheless, the narrator contemplates his desire for revenge and his plan to "not only punish, but punish with impunity"; that is, to punish Fortunato without being caught or punished himself. Furthermore, he is determined not to act in secrecy, for Fortunato must know that his pain is handed to him by Montresor.

Fortunato has no idea that Montresor is angry with him�Montresor has given no hint of it. When Montresor encounters his "friend" on the street one evening during the carnival season, Fortunato has no reason to be suspicious. Montresor asks Fortunato to come with him and sample a large cask of Amontillado, a type of wine, which Montresor has just purchased. Fortunato is justifiably proud of his ability to recognize good wines, and he is already drunk. He is easily persuaded to follow his friend, especially when Montresor assures him that if Fortunato cannot sample the wine for him, another man, Luchesi, will surely do it.

Montresor and Fortunato, who is dressed in his carnival costume of striped clothing and a conical jester's cap with bells, go to Montresor's palazzo. Convenientiy, the servants are away enjoying the carnival, and no one sees them enter. They descend a long, winding staircase to the wine cellar and catacombs, the dark and damp tunnels and caverns beneath the palazzo where generations of Montresors have been laid to rest. As they walk on, they pass piles of bones and piles of wine casks, intermingled in the passageways. Montresor fusses over Fortunato's health and his schedule, knowing that the more he suggests that Fortunato

Edgar Allan Poe

give up the quest, the more his companion will be determined to see it through.

As they walk along, the men converse in an idle way, about the potentially hazardous nitre forming on the walls and the coat of arms of the Montresor family. To protect Fortunato from the damp, Montresor gives him drinks of two wines that are stored in the catacombs. When Fortunato reveals himself to be a member of the Masons, Montresor pulls a trowel from beneath his cape and declares that he too is a Mason. Always Fortunato is pulled forward by the promise of the Amontillado.

Eventually they reach the lastchamber, a crypt nearly full of piled bones with only a small alcove of empty space within. When Fortunato steps to the back to look for the Amontillado, Montresor quickly chains him to two iron staples fastened to the wall. He

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uncovers a pile of building stones concealed beneath some of the bones and begins to build a wall, sealing Fortunato in. As Fortunato recovers from his drunkenness and becomes aware of what is happening to him, he cries out for mercy, but Montresor pays no attention. He still refuses to speak of the offenses that have brought him to the point of murder, and Fortunato does not ask why Montresor is ready to kill him. Montresor finishes his wall and piles bones up against it, leaving Fortunato to die.

In the last lines Montresor the actor once again becomes Montresor the narrator, who began the story. Now he reveals that the murder happened fifty years before. In Latin he speaks over Fortunato's body: "Rest in peace."

Like most short stories published in locally distributed magazines, "The Cask of Amontillado," when it appeared in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846, attracted no special critical attention. A year earlier Poe had published a collection of tales, which were widely reviewed. Most of these reviews were favorable, praising Poe's powers of imagination and control of language. George Colton's review in the American Whig Review was typical in heralding the volume's "most undisputable marks of intellectual power and keenness; and an individuality of mind and disposition, of peculiar intensity." A few were not only negative but scathing; in his review in the Brook Farm Harbinger, Charles Dana described Poe's stories as "clumsily contrived, unnatural, and every way in bad taste." Significantly, the collection of tales was read and reviewed in all parts of the country and helped bring Poe to a much larger audience than he had previously enjoyed.

After Poe's death in 1849, his literary executor, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote an obituary in the New York Tribune in which he slanderously exaggerated Poe's weaknesses. He described Poe as a "shrewd and

naturally unamiable character" who "walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses." The following year Griswold published an edition of Poe's Works. In response to the two Griswold projects came a flurry of writing about Poe, much of it praising the writing but condemning the writer. Typical was an unsigned 1858 review in the Edinburgh Review: "Edgar Allan Poe was incontestably one of the most worthless persons of whom we have any record in the world of tetters." Over the next fifty years negative writing about Poe focused on his moral character, as presented by Griswold, more than on his work. Critics seemed unable to move beyond the general observation that Poe led a troubled life and wrote troubling stories. Although critics and scholars continued to read and examine Poe's short stories, and although French and German writers continued to admire Poe, his reputation and importance declined throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century.

By the beginning of the twentieth century much of the public's distaste had subsided and critics were able to write more objectively about Poe's achievements. In the early third of the century Poe was widely praised for his poetry, but Gothicism had fallen out of favor and his stories were dismissed by such writers as T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. Though the poem "The Raven" had been closely analyzed from its first publication, "The Cask of Amontillado" was not singled out for examination until the 1930s. In the 1930s and 1940s critics focused on tracing Poe's sources, arguing that Poe borrowed his plot from other nineteenth-century writers, a murder case in Boston, a literary quarrel from his own life, or other sources. Writers in the 1990s returned to the question of sources as a way of revealing Poe's intentions. Richard Benton is among those who suggest that the story can be read as historical fiction, based on real historical

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figures and addressing social class issues of interest to nineteenth-century Americans.

Other critics at midcentury were concerned with exploring the significance of details in the story that readers might not be expected to understand without explanation. Kathryn Montgomery Harris in Studies in Short Fiction (1969) and James E. Rocks in the Poe Newsletter (1972) analyzed the conflict in the story between the Roman Catholic Montresor and Fortunato, a Mason. Rocks concluded that Montresor kills Fortunato because "he must protect God's word and His Church against His enemies." Other writers in the same period explored the significance of the names "Montresor/' "Fortunato," and "Amontillado."

The largest body of criticism of the story has examined Montresor's remorse or lack or remorse for his crime. Daniel Hoffman, in his Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe, agrees with many others that Montresor is consumed by guilt. "Has not Montresor walled up himself in this revenge? Of what else can he think, can he have thought for the past half-century, but of that night's vengeance upon his enemy?" Others find no hint of guilt in Montresor, leading some early readers to reject the story as immoral. Bettina Knapp places "The Cask of Amontillado" among Poe's "shadow tales," which do not "offer values. No judgmental forces are at work. Crime is neither a negative nor a positive act. Poe's psychopaths do not distinguish between good and evil, nor do they usually feel remorse or guilt." This issue has become the central critical question for "The Cask of Amontillado."

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