Short Story Analysis on "The Cask of Amontillado" - Essay Example

A person pretending to be a good friend turns out to be a killer. His revenge takes the better part of him; He plans about it, follows faithfully and executes his evil plan. As the story starts, we are prepared for a story full of revenge. Montresor says “Fortunato had hurt me a thousand times and I had suffered quietly. But I learned that he had laughed at my proud name, Montresor, The name of an old and honored family.” Because of this, he sets out on a mission to revenge for himself and the disrespect that Fortunato accorded his family.

He says ‘I promised I would make him pay for this’. In his revenge mission, he is courteous that no one would know about it, hence he decides not to tell anyone but execute the plan all by himself. He arrives at this decision because he did not want to suffer in any way as he followed his wreaked heart to execute another man. Even as revenge so much throbbed through his blood, he was cautious to raise any alarm as that would cause him not to execute his revenge. Therefore, motivated by revenge, he ‘continued to smile in his face’.

Even in his mind, he knew that the smiles were a mere show of his teeth. He frankly says that Fortunato did not understand that he was then smiling at the thought of what he planned for him, at the thought of his revenge. Determined to kill Fortunato, he identifies his weakness. Fortunato, though a strong man to be feared, he had a great weakness. ‘He liked to drink Good wine’. And the bad part of it, which Montresor could easily take advantage of, was that he always drank too much of it.

That presents Montresor a channel which he can exploit to achieve his desires of revenge. Having identified this weakness, the avenger goes ahead to buy wine, he actually buys the best wine, for he thinks clearly that the wine can give him the revenge that he so much wants to carry out. He already has laid a trap for Fortunato. A trap to