What is the story "The Cask of Amontillado" about?

Question

I read the story, but I couldnt get it. What's up with Edgar Allan Poe? I can't understand his style. Can someone help me?

Answer 1

This guy's friend insults him (Poe's never clear on what he did), so this guy lures him into his wine cellar and gets him really drunk on wine and then bricks him into this little room with a torch.
It's all about revenge.

Answer 2

One reading has it that the story is part of the war of the literati in which Poe wished to work out his hostility to his literary enemies. Fortunato represents Thomas Dunn English, a contemporary against whom Poe brought, and won, a suit of libel ("The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne...") while Luchesi represents Hiram Fuller, editor of the Evening Mirror in New York. Even if Poe did not intend any resemblance, the coincidence in time between the libel case and the composition of this story make it likely that the mood of the story was influenced by the emotions aroused by the libel case (Mabbott, 1253).

Answer 3

The story begins during the carnival, in an unspecified Italian city. The fast-talking first person narrator, Montresor, bears a grudge — the reader never learns exactly why — against one of his 'friends', who, ironically, is named Fortunato, and explains that he has found a way to avenge himself that satisfies the two conditions he has: that Fortunato knows for sure that Montresor is behind it, and that he himself escapes revenge or punishment.

Montresor finds his friend Fortunato at dusk. He is inebriated, and dressed in carnival costume as a jester. Using reverse psychology, he induces Fortunato, whose knowledge of fine wine he admires, to follow him into the catacombs underneath his palazzo to determine if his newly-acquired cask of amontillado — a kind of Spanish sherry — is indeed authentic, and thus worth the price he had paid. They walk and talk, deep into the basement, discussing Fortunato's health, the Montresor family motto (Nemo me impune lacessit — Latin for "No one assails me with impunity"), and membership in the Freemasons (the trowel Montresor brandishes to punctuate his masonic point carries a double meaning, as Fortunato will soon learn). The ominous atmosphere intensifies as they continue to the damp, nitrous air of the Montresor crypt.

Dumbfounded at the absence of the amontillado at the end of their passage, Fortunato stands 'stupidly bewildered' and Montresor takes advantage of the situation, suddenly chaining Fortunato to the wall in a small alcove roughly the size of a coffin. Montresor seals the doorway with bricks as Fortunato regains his sobriety and pleads in desperation. During the process of entombing Fortunato alive, Montresor taunts him with his freedom, thrusts a torch into the room through the remaining opening, then walls him up completely. Montresor leaves, concluding his story with an exclamation in Latin "In pace requiescat!" ("May he rest in peace!"). He tells us that this all happened fifty years ago, and nothing has disturbed the tombs since, entirely fulfilling his original plan.

Answer 4

Poe is a dark, dark writer. He explores the areas of ourselves that we are most uncomfortable with. Our fears, secret desires, character flaws. He tries to reveal all that is concealled in the dark heart of man.

Answer 5

It is a tale of horrible, deferred revenge taken for a slight received by the protagonist.

Answer 6

Its about a man embittered at finding himself reduced in social status blaming another and taking his revenge.

Answer 7

His style is slightly morbid. Tis awesome ^__^

Answer 8

its about how a guy traps his buddy in a wine cellar.