Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” starts out with a basic precept which is that revenge is a dish best served cold. “ at length I would be avenged” (289) the narrator Montresor explains. The wisdom of this is that he’s less likely to be detected in his revenge and therefore punished for his actions. As he puts it he doesn’t want “retribution” to overtake “its redressor” (289). So he’s going to be slick about his revenge and not get caught.

Whatever Fortunato actually did to the narrator is pretty vague, but at any rate, he felt insulted by the “thousand injuries” and insults (289). From Fortunato’s perspective it does not appear he was even aware of such insults or else he would not have been so easily waylaid. So Fortunato does not even know there is a problem.

At any rate Montressor lures Fortunato to his “pallazzo” or his house on the pretext of getting his opinion about the Amontillado, which according to the annotations of my Oxford World’s Classic edition, is a “light-colored Spanish Sherry, not the finest of wines” (337). It is suggested that perhaps Poe chose this varietal of sherry more on the basis of the sound of the name rather than its inherent qualities.

The narrator persuades Fortunato that it was his idea to go taste the Sherry. He appeals to Fortunato’s vanity by comparing his knowledge of wine to another character Lucchesi, whom Fortunato insists knows much less about wine. And despite his cough, Fortunato is quite insistent that he’ll continue the journey to the catacombs underneath the narrator’s estate, an appropriately gloomy Gothic setting, with “piled bones” interlinked with casks of wine.

Montresor’s repeated stated concern for Fortunato’s cough is another example of dramatic irony in the story, given his intention to kill Fortunato/ bury him alive, as noted in a Gale Literature Review (Jelena and Petrides). We as the readers know that he’s not so nice.

In a bit of reverse psychology, the more Montresor says you’re sick you can’t go, the more Fortunato says the hell I can’t!

Montressor implores him:

"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp.”

Fortunato pushes back and insists on going to the narrator’s vaults, which will be his doom.

When the narrator locks Fortunato in chains, his cool and collected manner of laying the stones to seal him in, contrasts with the ghastliness of his actions. It’s another classic example of irony in Poe’s fiction.

In a final Gambit Fortunato suggests that it was all just a joke and isn’t it really time to get back to the festival? It’s an act of desperation to escape, and the narrator responds in a chilling manner, with a double meaning:

“Yes, let us be gone” (294).

First published in 1846, The Cask of Amontillado remains one of Poe’s most famous and celebrated short stories. The Michael M Vlog agrees: it’s grisly, and chilling. In fact, the notion that a short story from almost two centuries ago can still strike with such immediacy and horror is a testament to Poe’s literary prowess.

There are varying interpretations of the short story, in particular with regards to Montresor’s mysterious grievous against Fortunado. Gale Literaure cites one such interpretation which frames the story as “Poe’s fantasy revenge against reviewers, publishers, and editors such as Hiram Fuller and Thomas Dunn English, with whom he had public feuds” (Jelena and Petrides). That seems a little far fetched. But at any rate, the short story stands on its own as an example of Poe’s timeless gothic fiction.

Works Cited

Krstovic, Jelena, and Christina Petrides. ““The Cask of Amontillado”.” Short Story Criticism, edited by Catherine C. DiMercurio, vol. 261, Gale, 2019. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/RKOTSV958839731/GLS?u=j057914&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=26c171a1. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025.

Poe, Edgar. Edgar Allan Poe Selected Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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