"The Cask of Amontillado" － No Punishment without Impunity

No one is so optimistic but he betrays some negative attitude when assaulted by an oppressive experience of failure: for instance, disappointed love, bankruptcy of business, and so on. However, generally speaking, any distressed feeling toward such predicaments tends to be gradually disintegrated and finally vanish, as time goes by. Yes, “time” is the best, or maybe the solo medicine to get rid of our pessimism, as is often said like this: “You can laugh at it someday.”


Yet, this specific cure of time suddenly becomes good for nothing when one succumbs to the feeling of remorse. This feeling obstinately forces one to recall the miserable events and therefore changes into an odious obstacle for one to make the first step. We can see such a pitying man who is at a loss detained by the evil force of remorse. His name is Montresor, a character in the story, “The Cask of Amontillado”, by Edgar Allan Poe. We will be convinced of the idea that Montresor, who killed his rival Fortunato fifty years ago and now becomes an old man, definitely feels a sense of penitence over his past crime.

The first confirmation making us convinced of Montresor’s repentance is seen in the fundamental setting of “The Cask of Amontillado” ― the fact that this story is constructed by old Montresor’s first-person narration. He relates his perfect crime to someone, as is manifested in this phrase: “You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat” (Poe, 790). So, it is obvious that there is someone in front of Montresor. Today, a lot of scholars guess that surely the person is a priest or his own self; both can be true and seem valid, and more important is: both must be the proof warranting Montresor’s feeling of remorse.

If we interpret the unknown listener as a priest, the thesis of Montresor’s repentance earns its legitimacy in terms of a “deathbed confession” (Reynolds, 107). Montresor, who was a Roman Catholic (Reynolds, 100), can be thought to have taken refuge in religious conscience in the end, however astute and merciless a killer he once was. Actually, there are many indications of his Catholic spirit in the story: the setting of carnival, which is a Catholic period just before the Lent; the emblem of Montresor’s family’s, the heel and crushed serpents, meaning the militant superiority on the part of a Catholic church over evil; the word “catacombs”, being reminiscent of the early history of a Catholic church (Reynolds, 100). Probably, such insinuations of religious spirit can be said to succeed in achieving Poe’s ulterior purpose to maintain a moral atmosphere in this story, and at the same time, as Reynolds points out, in contributing to satisfying the religiously inclined readers, making them convinced that a sinner is supported to end up seeing appropriate punishment (108). Thus, in confessing his crime to a priest, Montresor feels contrite deeply, proving a tiny feeling of conscience is still left in his cruel heart.

The other testimony verifying the apologetic nature of this confession is the very situation in which it took place. Bearing in mind his insincere way of using language in the extremely serious scene, it can be safely said Montresor’s confession is based on a privately created setting (Renza, 100). Yes, he was talking to himself, maybe looking at his own self reflected in a large mirror face to face directly. Consider ― if he had really taken pride in his crime, and wanted to boast it, he would have set a more public, and elaborate monologue stage with which to draw people’s attention and to satisfy his vanity. However, he didn’t; instead, he tried to alleviate his vehement twinge of penitence in the situation of private confession, which could preclude otherwise possible interference produced by bursts of indignation upon his cruel crime on the part of listeners. Thus, in both cases, whether he was talking to a priest, or his own self, it is apparent Montresor regarded his confession as an ultimate way of expressing his feeling of penitence.

Second, a myriad of intended ironical expression and paradoxical involvement of the readers in this story indicate that one’s expectation will be ruthlessly betrayed in the end, and such betrayal eventually comes back as a constant reminder of one’s feeling of remorse. In fact, Poe intentionally has plenty of ironical plot lines, many of which are created by Montresor, scattered throughout this story in unobtrusive but unmistakably calculated manner. It must be worth noting that Poe shrewdly treats these series of sarcastic comments of Montresor’s as blatant preludes to the definitive irony haunting Montresor himself as much as for fifty years, which we will see closely later.

Here, we can take a look of some examples of these ironies: in the day midst the carnival season when Montresor decided to kill Fortunato, he ostensibly congratulated the adversary on how he was lucky to see himself at the convivial thought of his subsequent death; leading Fortunate into his catacombs, Montresor apparently showed his seemingly genuine sympathy for the victim’s longer life in spite of Montresor himself putting an eternal end to the dupe’s life a few minutes later; making fool of the chained Fortunato, Montresor impressed on the victim that he would provide him the least interference he could do although he was going to impose the most malevolent intrusion of killing on Fortunato later (Magistrale, 93). Plus, the astute killer is thought to have been an expert in psychology due to the dexterous manner of “inviting”, which is so called reverse psychology, another ironical point. Throughout the story, Montresor had never directly implored the dupe to come with him into the wine vaults; in fact he cleverly produced the situation in which Fortunate himself willingly decided to make his way through the catacombs, playing on his jealousy toward Luchesi (Reynolds, 104).

Again, it must not be forgotten that these sarcastic elements by Montresor function as prefaces to one decisive irony ― the compulsive sense of repentance incessantly assaulting Montresor for half a century. At the beginning of the story, Montresor elatedly relates to the unknown listener his pet theory of what impeccable revenge should be like: the revenge which has no possibility of making its redresser incur detriment of re-retaliation, and brings home to the target his overwhelming superiority. In the end, to all appearance, it is obvious that Montresor successfully exerted the “perfect” vengeance over Fortunato. However, he was not able to be happy; instead he had been suffering from the unavoidable predicament owing to an obsessive memory of dead Fortunato, contrary to his assumed expectation of deriving imperishable sense of calmness in his revenge ― the person who could really “make himself felt as such to him who has done wrong” (Poe, 790) was blatantly Fortunato (Magistrale, 94). Thus, the ultimate irony of the compulsive memory of dead Fortunato diabolically penetrates Montresor’s heart, constantly reminding him of the sense of remorse over his having committed killing at that night, insinuating that otherwise he now could lead a peaceful, if not hopeful, secluded life.

We can also confirm Montresor’s aspect of repentance by the thesis that since that night he had been forced to go through life imprisoned in ineluctable anguish resulting from “self-destruction”; the person Montresor himself believed he killed was actually an embodiment of his own self, a doppelganger (Grantz). There are many signs warranting the identification between Montresor and Fortunato in the story. For example, these very names can be interpreted as synonyms with each other: Montresor, meaning “treasure” in French, and Fortunato, associated with the word “fortunate”, both evidently imply something auspicious to us (Kennedy, 142). Plus, they are both experts in wine, and sincerely proud of their own skills, as Montresor said “I did not differ from him [Fortunato] materially; ― I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself” (Poe, 790), and Fortunato enthusiastically claimed his preeminent wine-discerning ability above Luchesi.

That Poe insinuates to readers that Montresor and Fortunato had the same identity and symbolized a doppelganger can be also confirmed by the view concerning the dichotomy between temperance and intemperance. According to critic David Grantz, Montresor can be seen as a symbol of the personality controlling “judgement” and “reasoning” while the personality of Fortunato can be interpreted as an embodiment of the self-indulgent desire for “pleasures of the flesh”; this can be safely said probably because Montresor implemented his killing plan so cruelly and ruthlessly as to totally forget or even negate his warm human feelings, which could be an obstacle of imperturbable judgement; on the other hand Fortunato was so deeply enamoured with the mention of Amontillado he completely lost his reason, disclosing readers to his highly hedonistic nature. Grantz says the two individualities are actually divided from one person. This idea earns its profundity when closely analyzed from the fact that Montresor’s coat of arms was a foot with “a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel” (Poe, 791). It is worth noting that the fact that Grantz calls the serpent “the foolish side of his [Montresor’s] nature” must be a great insinuator implying the serpent actually represents Fortunato, the “foolish side” of Montresor meaning his opposite personality ― “the pleasures of the flesh”. The serpent, implanting the fangs in one’s heel, reveals his fiercely pleasure-seeking desire toward the flesh in the same way Fortunato does toward Amontillado. Therefore, it is significantly important that we can imagine the caricatured image of that coat of arms in which Fortunato, stamped by Montresor, sticks his fangs into the enemy’s heel ― another proof showing integration of the two men.

Thus, it is quite obvious that the person Montresor walled into death was in fact his own self. We must remember that especially noteworthy is that this self-destruction contributes to Montresor’s incessant sense of remorse. This remorse feeling can be said to come from the anguish Montresor had been forced to endure as a result of the killing of his own self: what intolerable agony you are destined to experience if you obliterate your own doppelganger is clearly manifested in one of Poe’s former short stories, “William Wilson”, very similar to “The Cask of Amontillado”. In this tale, William, who had been obsessed by his namesake’s impeccable imitations ― the very same name, appearance, and date of birth ―, at last penetrated his knife into the enemy repeatedly with the clear volition of slaying. However, at the next moment, William found the namesake, in the tortures of destruction, addressing himself like this: “You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead – dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope!” (Poe, William Wilson). This foreboding message literally implies that William will be all but dead in the rest of his life. Probably, Poe applies the same kind of predicament to Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado”. Like William, by eliminating his odious lookalike, Montresor was made to realize the presence at an unavoidable price (Kennedy, 143).

To eradicate one’s own doppelganger is to be deprived of all vitality and incarcerated into hopeless darkness all one’s life. Thus, inactive, catatonic, and moribund, Montresor lost his way in his life, as if unconsciously obedient to that ominous prophecy by dead William Wilson. It is certain that Montresor, telling his crime, felt regretful, remorsefully imagining he might have been a happier man, had he been clever and mature enough to appreciate the importance of getting compatible with his doppelganger.

As we have seen so far, it can be safely said that the cruel killer named Montresor feels repentant of his past crime. His miserable doom itself becomes the great indicator to show us a universally significant lesson: you cannot punish someone with impunity.



Works Cited


Grantz, David. The Poe Decoder - That Spectre in My Path. <http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/spectre/>.

Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death and the Life of Writing. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1987.

Magistrale, Tony. Student Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Fiction100. Ed. James H. Pickering. New York: Macmillan, 1978. 790-793.

---. “William Wilson”. Qrisse’s Edgar Allan Poe Pages. 8 February 2008
<http://www.poedecoder.com/Qrisse/works/ww.php>.

Renza, Louis A. Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, and the Poetics of American Privacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Reynolds, David S. “Poe’s Art of Transformation: ‘The Cask of Amontillado in its Cultural Context.’” New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales. Ed. Kenneth Silverman. New York: Cambridge Press, 1993. 93―112.