The Cask of Amontillado Summary and Analysis

Summary
Once again this is one of Poe’s shorter stories and is set somewhere in Italy. It is based around two main characters Montresor and Fortunato a wine seller. Somewhere along the way Fortunato has wronged Montresor and this has occurred several times and now Montresor seeks revenge.
There is a carnival going on at the time to celebrate the start of Lent and this is where Montresor runs into Fortunato. Fortunato is quite drunk and has obviously been having a good time at the festival.
Montresor tells Fortunato that he has recently come into possession of a cask of Amontillado which is a high quality wine from Spain. However Montresor is not sure whether the wine is genuine or not. Fortunato takes the opportunity being a wine expert and tells Montresor that he would be happy to check the quality of the wine.
The pair go to Montresors house and descend into the cellar where the wine is kept. There are also the skeletons of Montresors relatives that have been stored in the cellar as well. Fortunato is quite sick and appears to have a cold of some sort and Montresor keeps asking him if he is well enough to keep going.
Montresor give Fortunato some wine to make him feel better and gets him quite drunk.
The pair finally reach the end of a tunnel and Montresor quickly claps Fortunato in irons and proceeds to wall up the tunnel.
That is pretty much the end of it.
Analysis
Once again we have an unreliable narrator detailing the facts and we are not overly sure of his mental stability. The fact that Montresor was carrying a trowel with him suggests that this was a fairly premeditated course of action, but we are never quite sure how Montresor has been wronged. There is some interesting language use, the one that stood out for me was the coughing at the bottom of page 498 with the ‘ugh! Ugh!...’, it seems a little unnecessary but nothing is put in without a reason and perhaps Poe wanted to really emphasise the sickness of Fortunato. There is a little play on words in this story as well, think of the title the cask of Amontillado that a cask could mean a bottle of wine but also a coffin. Also when Montresor is asked if he is a mason he says yes but rather than meaning a free mason he means he is a stone mason which comes in handy when he is walling up the tunnel. Consider also Fortunato’s name in this case he is not fortunate at all.