The cask of amontillado is one of the finest mystery and horror stories written by Edgar Allen Poe. He began popularizing the trend of writing in the mystery genre that continued to develop with writers like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie adding their own styles.

A CHILLING FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT

The story is a chilling first person account of the revenge that Montresor took with his friend Fortunato. The reason for taking revenge is not made explicit and the reader is told of insults borne by the narrator. So angry is the narrator that he must avenge at whatever cost. Yet he does not tell us what plans he has in his minds. In fact, the reader never gets to see the planning and scheming aspect of the narrator at all. All that is given are hints as the story nears its intended end, and it is not difficult to imagine that the entire episode of the killing had been prepared beforehand.

The most striking part of the story is the number of times the victim is told to go back, to return. And the chilling humor in the fact that the victim himself persuades his killer to take him where ground has already been prepared for his death. The victim leads himself to his own end, so to say. The writer never hints the reader all this time he (the protagonist) tries to persuade Fortunato to go back. The reader is therefore left in a limbo as to where the story leads.

THE SIMPLEST PLOT: REVENGE

The simplest plot emerges in the story: the narrator wants to avenge for his insults. He meets the culprit, and is taking him somewhere. We know he will do some harm to the man. But we do not know what and how.

The what and the how slowly come out in the end. The victim has been lured with his weakness for wines into the dark recesses of a catacomb under a river. He has been persuaded umpteen times to return, to go back, for all kinds of reasons, his health included. Yet he wants to go ahead, stubbornly. This tells us something about the character to be killed, and what might have further provoked the killer.

VICTIM DE-HUMANIZED

Chained to a wall, the victim realizes his situation. The wall begins to be constructed to kill him. He pleads, but to no avail. The writer now stops using his name ? Fortunato ? to describe him. To the killer, he is some shadow, some creature. He has been de-humanized to be killed.

Would the writer now stop and allow mercy to enter? To show all this as a practical joke to punish and avenge. Would he allow human values ? mercy, friendship, enjoyment to end it all? A good laugh at the end? NO.

KILLING THE INNER VOICE

The killer feels his heart heavy, not because of the act of murder he is going to commit, but because of the dampness!! He stops and pauses before putting the final brick. Values? Conscience? No. He feels reassured by resting his hands on the macabre wall from which it had removed all the bones a few days back to commit the act that was now almost complete. How could it now go back?

The final sentence is like putting a final brick to complete the story: the wall has never been disturbed again for the next half a century.

That means the creature that was inside is long dead, but that is a deduction we make.

THE FINAL CHOICE MADE: TO KILL

What do we make of this story? As a story it is chilling and dead macabre. The literary style is the simplest one could imagine ? simple, short sentences in a talk-to-reader first person mode. A description of revenge. A story of the moral downfall of a human, but never described as such by the writer. He is serious, just like his killer. The first person mode makes them one to us. Given the pointed nature of the story, it is difficult to put it in an evaluative mode. As a psychological drama, it shows the real, true glimpses in the mind of a man wronged and insulted. It reveals the mind of the killer. But does not justify it morally, except by stating at the beginning that a wrong must be avenged. If there are degrees of avenging, we are not told of them. The narrator proceeds with his choice of revenge: a planned killing.

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