Symbol and Irony in the Short Story - Assignment Example

Symbol and Irony in the Short Story The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe are d for their use of figurative language. This is clearly evident in“The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat”. Both works contain many instances of symbolism and irony which this paper aims to point out. Poe himself was a blend of two distinct and seemingly opposed personalities. On one hand he exhibits an intense sensitivity of feeling as well as a tempestuous strength of emotion that makes the man and his works seem neurotic and unbalanced; hence most readers are constrained to imagine whether such works could have been accomplished by the same person, or whether the man was not himself with drugs (which he never touched) or with wine (which he drank but under the influence of which, he was unable to write). Ironically, on the other hand, Poe was a cool thinker, with a keen and logical mind. Now one and then the other of these two sides is uppermost in Poe’s strange personality. Poe began to write verse before he was fifteen after which he published volumes of poetry. His first work as a short-story writer won a prize offered in 1833 by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. Poe achieved recognition as a critic, being the first in America to appreciate E.B. Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, Hawthorne and Lowell. Of his tales of fantasy, among the most remarkable is “The Cask of Amontillado”. The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe are replete with symbol and irony which he used to best advantage. The first short story of Poe to be analyzed for figurative language is “The Cask of Amontillado”. The story in a nutshell has to do with two equally wealthy friends – Fortunato and Montresor. Fortunato abuses the good will of Montresor who vows to take his revenge and finally does. He capitalizes on the former’s ability to distinguish among rare wines, although Montresor is just as knowledgeable. Fortunato flaunts his talent, whreas Montresor keeps a low profile. It is for an ulterior motive that he fakes his ignorance of wines. The very names of the characters are symbolic. Fortunato means “fortunate” while Montresor means “my treasure”. Fortunato may be said to be fortunate at the start since he was imbued with great wealth, but there is also such a thing as “ill fortune” which beset him in the end. The name Montresor could be a symbol for what Montresor valued most – his honor, since “the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” (Poe, Cask of Amontillado). It is ironic that the opportunity for taking revenge occurred at the peak of the Carnival season – a time for revelry, gaiety and good fellowship and that Montresor would have succumbed to the spirit under ordinary circumstances. The accumulation of Fortunato’s wrongs towards him rendered him resolute in his plan for revenge. With this frame of mind, it would be truly ironic for Montresor to have met Fortunato by chance and greeted him so warmly thus: “I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. I said to him ‘My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking today.’” (Poe, Cask of Amontillado). When the two characters met, Fortunato “wore motley. He had a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. He was dressed in the costume of a medieval court jester –the proverbial symbol for stupidity and laughter. It was the fool who provided amusement and delight for the king whenever he was feeling low in spirits just as Fortunato now was providing Montresor with excitement and satisfaction according to plan. It is ironic that Montresor’s strict orders for his household members not to stir from the palazzo in his absence were disregarded, in favor of making merry at the Carnival. This is equally ironic that the more he tried to dissuade Fortunato from going home, the more the latter insisted on helping Montresor locate the Amontillado among the ageing wines in the cellar. Actually, to achieve his purpose, Montresor was using reverse psychology (but to the reader, it is ironic). Throughout the account, true irony is found in Montresor’s reference to Fortunato as “my poor friend” – when the crux of the matter is that they were no longer friends, because of the latter’s constant abuse of their friendship in the past. Montresor’s constant reference to Luchresi as a wine expert strengthened Fortunato’s resolve for Montresor to locate the Amontillado despite Fortunato’s state of health. He had already developed a serious cough and the nitre in the vaults was steadily increasing, thus worsening his condition. Montresor sought to alleviate Fortunato’s discomfort and landed him a flagon of Degrave, the latter emptied it in a breath and later threw the bottle upwards with a strange gesticulation with which Montresor was not familiar. Fortunato explained condescendingly that it was a gesture of membership in the Brotherhood of Masons. It is the height of irony that Montresor who is a non-member of the brotherhood would soon cause Fortunato’s death with his practical knowledge of masonry – Fortunato who prided himself with being a Freemason! Come to think of it, how ironic it is for a man such as Fortunato to be obsessed with conneisseurship of rare wines to meet his end among the underground vaults that served as the repository of ageing, rare wines, and he didn’t even sample the Amontillado that lured him to destruction! The last evidences of figurative language in “The Cask of Amontillado” are irony in that a man like Fortunato who loved light, life and leisure in other regard, a man to be respected and even feared, should die in such a shoddy manner. He died in the darkeness of the catacombs, with no one around except his killer and among human remains piled overhead. These human remains consisted of skulls and bones – symbols of death and destruction. “As the emblem foretold, Montresor is boned with Fortunato and “dies” with him” (Strepp:450). Thus ended the earthly existence of Fortunato who was not so fortunate after all. The other short story to be analyzed for figurative language is “The Black Cat” – also by Edgar Allan Poe, first published on August 19, 1843 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. It is a story of the psychology of guilt and is often paired in analysis with the aforementioned work of Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”. The superstitious ones among us believe that a black cat is a symbol of misfortune. They say that if a black cat crosses your path, misfortune will soon follow. So the best thing to do would be to turn back. In Poe’s tale, the black cat in question is described as follows: “We had birds, a goldfish, a fine dog, a rabbit, a small monkey and a black cat. The latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens just now to be remembered.” (Poe, Black Cat) This cat was symbolically named Pluto after the god of Graeco – Roman mythology who abducted Persephone, daughter of Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest. He brought her to his dark realm and made her his Queen. It was a very apt naming for the cat was entirely black and Pluto was the Prince of Darkness. Pluto has come to be a symbol for darkness and all that is mysterious. The story is all about the relationship between master and pet over the years and how a change in this the persona of the master effected a change in the aforementioned relationship, resulting in a devastating change in the fate of the “I” in the story. How ironic that the initial relationship between cat and master should deteriorate into cruelty and a sheer violation of animal rights as shown in these contrasting paragraphs: “Pluto – this was the cat’s name – was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets. “One night, returning home much intoxicated, form on of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him when in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed at once to take its flight from my body, and a more than fiendish malevolence gin- nurtured thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat and deliberately cut one of its eyes from its socket.” (Poe, The Black Cat). The irony of the character’s changed personality is that wine caused the crime and it was also wine that erased all memory of that deed. “I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damned atrocity. When reason returned in the morning, when I had slept off the fumes of the night’s debauch – I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty, but it was at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed. “After blinding the cat, it slowly recovered although the socket of the lost eye presented a grotesque appearance. The cat no longer suffered pain and roamed the house like before but fled in terror whenever the master approached. It is ironical that the master should grieve his pet’s reaction – an evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once loved him. “The spirit of perverseness present in the psychological makeup of a human being contains an irony which the “I’ in the selection explains: “… perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart… who has not a hundred times found himself committing a vile or silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment to violate that which is Law?” (Poe, The Black Cat). After the conflagration which reduced the master’s house to ashes, a crowd gathered around a portion of the house spared by the fire, there in bas-relief was graven the image of a gigantic cat with a rope around its neck. The master recognized it as a reproduction of his cat which he had recently hung on the limbs of a tree in his garden. The irony of this act was that he did it with tears streaming down his face as though he were doing it against his will. For the reader had become a symbol of the master’s conscience perhaps, chiding him for his unreasonable behavior. Size has often been associated with strength. Whoever was responsible for this strange occurrence saw to it that it would come in strongly to the beholder for whom it was meant. A new pet emerged resembling the old Pluto. Again, it is ironical that this intelligent man, the master, should not learn a lesson from his past experience. The old relationship set in with kindness towards the pet in the beginning deteriorating into hatred and fear towards the end. It id doubly ironical that the man, imbued with superior intelligence, skill and strength should be so threatened by such an animal as a mere cat, to resort to violent means to do away with the enemy. But this is exactly what he did. And the instrument used – an axe accidentally found its way into the head of his wife who was instantly killed. Still another irony was that the victim turned out to be someone who was a plus factor in his life and he knew it since he referred to her as the “wife of his bosom”. She was a perfect partner – a helpmate par excellence – sensitive to his needs, long suffering, keeper of his household, source of his comfort and joy. In the story, she serves as a symbol of innocence. The last irony of the tale is that he would have been successful in getting rid of the police had not the cat who had been entombed together with the corpse of his wife. The spirit of self-preservation prompted the cat emitted howls which enabled the police to nail the culprit for whom the cat had become a symbol for wretchedness and despair. “The horror in Poe’s tale originates not from the descriptions of murder or decomposing corpses (they are delivered with scientific precision, appropriate to the narrator’s detachment form those acts), but from the reader’s realization that the narrator is aggressively arguing his case and that given a last opportunity to humanize the self through a confrontation with death, he still flees in its face” (Badenhausen:490). “His way of telling a story was all his own and much resembled his way of writing a poem… In poetry, the effect was usually one of unearthly beauty and sadness; in prose it was usually one of unearthly fear and horror.’ (Cross, Smith and Stauffer, 1931). From the two short stories just analyzed, the readers are convinced that Poe’s work in its kind is original and perfect and his tales are flawless in technique. He is the frontline of American artists, and his influence has been worldwide, especially notable in France. Works Cited Badenhausen, R., “Fear and trembling in literature of the fantastic: Edgar Allan Poes `The Black Cat. Studies in Short Fiction, Vol.30, Issue 3, 1993 Cross, Smith and Stauffer, English and American Writers, 1931 Strepp, W. “The Ironic Double in Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’”, Studies in Short Fiction, Vol 13, Issue 4, 1976 Read More