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Cask of Amontillado Essay

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72 The Cask of Amontillado Essay Topics & Examples

Writing a theme analysis, thesis statement, or even a topic sentence for The Cask of Amontillado is an exciting opportunity to explore such problems as violence and revenge. Share your opinion on horror fiction with the tips, examples, and topics from our team .

🏆 Best The Cask of Amontillado Essay Topics & Examples

📌 most interesting the cask of amontillado essay topics, 👍 good the cask of amontillado essay questions & titles.

The Cask of Amontillado essay is an exciting opportunity to express your point of view on such problems like drugs and alcohol use, violence, revenge, and share your opinion on horror fiction.

Why Should You Write The Cask of Amontillado Paper?

There are three arguments to choose this short story for your critical review or literary analysis.

First of all, you should acknowledge that Edgar Allan Poe is an inventor of the detective and science fiction genres. He highlighted the worst human features like vindictiveness, drug addictions, fear, etc.

Second, the horror genre is still popular in the modern culture. Scary tales always were an excellent way to express personal and social anxieties over various problems.

Third, Poe’s novels are easy to read but still complicated. You have to focus on details to get the whole picture. Moreover, each time you read the novel you can find new aspects that you might have missed before (Tip: check our The Cask of Amontillado essay examples to find new ideas you haven’t even considered yet).

The Cask of Amontillado Essay Questions

Finding the right paper topic can become a daunting task. That’s why we prepared a bunch of ideas for your The Cask of Amontillado essay topics.

Check them below:

• Why does the author uses the first-person view narration? Think how different the novel could be if it was told from the Fortunato or the third-person point of view.
• Do you sympathize Fortunato or think that he deserved his fate? Explain your opinion.
• Consider writing your The Cask of Amontillado essay thesis on alcohol and alcohol abuse. Could Fortunato escape his fate if he was sober and not addicted to alcohol?
• Compare the revenge and villain in the Poe’s novel to a modern short stories. Would Montresor dare to commit this crime in XXI century? Find analogies in a modern literature and movie production.
• Compare this novel and to Poe’s The Black Cat. Think which novel is the darkest of his writings and provide your arguments.
• Analyse the role of scenery in the plot. Is there a connection between characters’ fate and scenery?
• How our actions and decisions influence our destiny? Analyze why Fortunato decided to taste the amontillado. Could he refuse? Did he have a chance to escape?
• Analyze why trapping Fortunato still not makes Montresor free. Why even 50 years after Fortunato’s death Montresor is still feeling angry.
• Explore the theme of mortality in Poe’s novel. Does it make you think about your own death? Express your thoughts.
• How do the way the murder was commited influences the reader’s comprehension of the story? Would the story differ if Montresor chose another way to kill Fortunado?
• Imagine if Montresor was a woman. How would it change the comprehension of the novel? Are there any signs that Montresor can be a woman?
• Explain, why did Montresor choose family catacomb for a murder. How do you feel about the descriptions of the crime scene?
• Analyze Fortunato’s dressings. Why is he dressed as a fool? Are there features of his character that contradict his image?

Now you have a lot of point to explore in your paper. If you are still not sure how to write The Cask of Amontillado essay outline, you can always check our examples to get inspiration on the topics and paper structure.

• Symbolic Elements in Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” The name Fortunato is a symbol of the genesis of Montresor’s plan for revenge. The attire is also symbolic of the sacrificial element that applies to Montresor’s revenge.
• The Cask of Amontillado The use of irony Poe uses three types of irony in the story as a literary tool that facilitates the readers’ understanding of the friendship that exists between Montresor and Fortunato.
• Literary Devices in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As such, Montresor finds his companion’s “transgression” worthy of the cruelest death, and believes that his cause is so right that he deserves to get away with it. Hyperbole There is a sense of this […]
• Dark Humor in The Cask of Amontillado Essay The use of horror and humor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the literary features that the author uses to constructs the story.
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” & “The Cask of Amontillado”: Summaries, Settings, and Main Themes As the narration progresses, fear arises in the reader or viewer, and finally, something horrific happens.”The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of the Amontillado” share all of the features above, as […]
• Revenge Theme in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe He, therefore, decides to seek revenge, but he wants to be careful in order not to risk his life. Fortunato seems to be fond of wine against Montresor, and he decides to use this as […]
• Imagery Use in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The story utilizes graphical language and imagery in the development of a sense of deceptive and persuasive nature and circumstances in the expansion of the symbolic approach of sustaining a condition of suspense. The imagery […]
• The Single Effect in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado The very first words uttered by the author at the start of the story carried the hook necessary to reel the reader into the story with the desired effect.
• An Epilogue to “The Cask of Amontillado” During the specific day that the trial took place, Montresor, the defendant, entered the courtroom for the verdict to be read.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’: Revenge, Hypocrisy, and Society On the day of the carnival Montresor goes looking for Fortunato and finds him a bit tipsy and it is then that he tells him of how he had acquired a rare kind of amontillado […]
• Irony in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As the atmosphere of gaiety during the carnival changes to the horror from the catacombs beneath Montresor’s palazzo the reader ascertains that the carnival was a prelude created by the author to admit the drastic […]
• Edgar Allan Poe: ”The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” In this discourse two of his famous short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are studied in an attempt to better understand the use of symbolism, the literary tool of irony, and […]
• “The Cask of Amontillado” as an Example of Horror Stories The primary specialty for the author is to capture the horror of the soul in its most vivid manifestations, and this task became the basis for one of his stories.
• Epilogue to “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe It is that the murder is a reason for the fifty-two years-old disappearance of the respected Fortunato, and the Montresor’s guild is undeniable”.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher In particular, we may analyze such novellas as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Browning’s “My Last Duchess” vs. Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” He is regretful of the dowry he did pay and thinks the Duchess was just pretentious. Fortunato is determined, and despite the sorry state of his friend, he tags him along to his demise.
• Mini Anthology: Poe Edgar Allan and Dickson Emily’ Works The other story that Poe Allen has written is “The fall of the House of Usher” whereby the main theme is about the haunted house, which is crumbling and this aspects brings out a Gothic […]
• Montressor in The Cask of Amontillado In addition, Montressor said that he was a friend of Fortunato but he seemed to have acted out of character when he assumed the habits and characteristics of a cold blooded killer.
• Poe’s Short Story “The Cask of Amontillado” At the time of the trial, Montresor is proud of what he did because it was fair in his eyes. According to this alternative reading of the event, Montresor sees family honor as his adversary, […]
• Carnival Season in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” In this monograph, the author explores the depiction of madness in literary works and specifically Poe’s “The cask of amontillado”. This article in a scholarly journal analyzes the protagonist of Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ […]
• Discussion of “The Cask of Amontillado” Fortunato was already drunk by the time he was led to the cask of amontillado. He perfectly lured his victim to the execution place and killed him.
• Theme of Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” However, it is possible that a person artificially invents the cause of his unhappiness and blames the other for this, although the problem might not exist if he had a different attitude to it.
• Evil in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat” The author intentionally uses the first-person point of view in order to reveal their thoughts and highlighting the dread of the happening.
• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The plot is told from the first person as the pronoun “I” is used and the story is told in the past tense.
• Jury Defense and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As a member of the jury sitting in on the trial of Montressor, I feel it is necessary for me to explain the reasons why the jury came to the conclusion it did.
• Literary Elements in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Razor” Nabokov and Poe use literary devices to create meaning, connect with the audience and deliver their message. The protagonists are different, with one of them being static, while another one changes.
• Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis The main character in “The Cask of Amontillado” is Montresor with Fortunato being a minor character in the short story. Also, Montresor is the story’s narrator, and a lot of details about his character are […]
• Narrative Perspectives in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” One of the reasons why the story The Cask of Amontillado and the poem My Last Duchess are being commonly referred to, as such that represent a particularly high value, is that the narrative perspective […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado Although the revelation of the character of Montressor was done indirectly, the fact that he was also the narrator of the story enabled readers to have access to his thoughts and feelings.
• Use of Setting to Create Mood in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Evaluating Symbolism and Irony in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Relationship Between Fortunato and Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Images of Narrators in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Revenge and Mortality in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Unjustified Motive for Murder in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Evaluation of the Role of Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Irony of Lies and Deceit in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Revenge of Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• A Dark Mood in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Symbolic Meaning of the Cask in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Vowing Revenge in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Misfortunes of Fortunato in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Literary Devices Used by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Use of Figurative Language as Persuasion in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Vengeful Montresor of “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Psychological Elements in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Irony and Foreshadowing in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Theme of Deception and Revenge in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Revenge Isn’t Sweet Forever: Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Plot of Vengeance in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Theme of Death and Life Experiences in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Perspective of Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Analysis of Homicide as a Result of Vengeance in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Sociopathic Killers in “The Cask of Amontillado” by E.A. Poe and “Night of the Hunter” by Charles Laughton
• Repression of Sexuality in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Effects of Foreshadowing on the Plot Structure in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Mental Illness of Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Question of Montresor’s Sanity in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Mortal Sin of Pride in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Negative Effects of Uncontrolled Ego in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Use of First Person Narration in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Pride and Retribution in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Use of Mystery and Darkness in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Aspects and Analysis of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat”
• The Portrayal of Revenge, Obsession, and the Fear of Being Buried Alive in “The Cask of Amontillado”
• Nature vs Nurture in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
• The Death Penalty in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Setting and Meaning in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
• The Role of Illnesses in “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”
• Symbolism, Imagery, and Theme Compared Through the Stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Scarlet Ibis”
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A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is one of Poe’s shorter classic tales. It was first published in 1846 in a women’s magazine named Godey’s Lady’s Book , a hugely popular magazine in the US in the mid-nineteenth century. (The magazine had published one of Poe’s earliest stories, ‘The Visionary’, twelve years earlier.)

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is one of Poe’s ‘revenge stories’, and the way he depicts the avenger’s psychological state is worthy of closer analysis.

Plot summary

First, a quick summary of the plot of ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, which is our way of saying ‘those who wish to avoid spoilers please look away now’. The story is narrated by the murderer, Montresor, who takes revenge on a fellow Italian nobleman, Fortunato, during the carnival season.

Fortunato, drunk and dressed in motley, boasts that he can tell an amontillado from other sherry, and so Montresor lures his rival down into Montresor’s family catacombs, saying that he has some amontillado for Fortunato to taste. Fortunato finds the descent difficult, thanks to the nitre in the catacombs, which exacerbate his bad chest.

Montresor plays on Fortunato’s inherent sense of pride in his knowledge of wines, by telling him that, if Fortunato cannot make the journey into the catacombs, they can turn back and Montresor can give the wine to Luchresi, another nobleman, instead.

Of course, this only makes Fortunato even more determined to be the one to taste the amontillado, and so they two of them keep going. When they arrive down in the catacombs, Montresor having plied his enemy with Medoc wine, he chains his drunken rival to the wall and then proceeds to wall him up inside the family vault, burying the man alive.

Fortunato at first believes it to be a jest, but then realises that he has been left here to die. Fifty years later, Montresor says that the body of Fortunato is still there in the vault.

Why does Montresor want revenge on Fortunato? This is where we see Poe’s genius (a contentious issue – W. B. Yeats thought his writing ‘vulgar’ and T. S. Eliot, whilst praising the plots and ideas of Poe’s stories, thought the execution of them careless) can be seen most clearly in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.

For Montresor has every reason to confide to us – via his close friend, the addressee of his narrative, who is our stand-in in the story – his reason for wishing to kill Fortunato. But instead of getting a clear motive from him, we are instead given a series of possible reasons, none of which quite rings true.

It may be that Poe learned this idea from Shakespeare’s Othello , where the villainous Iago’s reasons for wishing to destroy Othello’s life are unclear, not because Iago offers us no plausible reasons for wishing to cause trouble, but because he offers us several , the effect of which is that they all cancel each other out, to an extent.

This is made clear in the opening words of the story:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled – but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.

Immediately, we are given an insight into the motive for the crime, but there is a sense that Montresor  wants  his crime – which he almost views as a work of art – to be acknowledged and even appreciated, in a strange way, by the victim. In other words, as Montresor explains, he wants Fortunato to know who has killed him (and why), but he wants to make sure nobody else finds out:

I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

That opening sentence is like a literal enactment of the familiar phrase, ‘to add insult to injury’. This provides a key clue to the motivation – shaky and vague as it is – of Montresor. His revenge is not motivated primarily by any tangible harm that Fortunato has done him, so much as a sense of resentment, a way Fortunato has of making Montresor feel inferior.

There are several clues offered by Poe in the story which suggest this as a plausible analysis of Montresor’s character and motivation. First of all, there is Fortunato’s name, suggesting fortune (wealth) but also being fortunate (luck), two qualities which don’t tend to enamour people to you, even though one’s possession of one or both of them hasn’t necessarily harmed anyone else. As F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby , put it: ‘Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.’

Although ‘Montresor’, the narrator’s name, suggests literally a ‘mountain of treasure’, the fortunate Fortunato still has the edge: as we know from such stories as Lawrence’s ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ , money is worth little without luck, for luck is how one acquires more money (though hard work doesn’t go amiss, of course). Another clue comes when Montresor fails to interpret a gesture made by Fortunato:

He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement – a grotesque one.

‘You do not comprehend?’ he said.

This taut, clipped conversation continues, as Poe deftly outlines the underlying reasons for the animosity that exists between the two men. In short, Montresor fails to understand the significance of the gesture Fortunato performs, leading Fortunato to suspect that Montresor is not a mason. Montresor insists he is, but Fortunato is having none of it:

‘You? Impossible! A mason?’

Fortunato asks Montresor for a sign that he really is a freemason:

‘It is this,’ I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel.

‘You jest,’ he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. ‘But let us proceed to the Amontillado.’

This moment suggests a further underlying reason for Montresor’s desire for revenge: Fortunato insults him by belittling him and reminding him that he is not part of the same ‘club’ as Fortunato.

It may be that Montresor – his name perhaps suggesting acquired wealth rather than first-rank nobility like Fortunato (who has inherited his wealth and name by being ‘fortunate’ enough to be born into the right aristocratic family) – is not quite of the same pedigree as Fortunato, and so has had none of the advantages and benefits that Fortunato has enjoyed.

Poe makes his point by some subterranean wordplay on mason : Fortunato refers to the freemasons, that secret elite society known for its mutual favours and coded signs, gestures, and rituals, but Montresor’s trowel suggests the stonemasons, those artisans and labourers who are not aristocrats but possess great manual skill.

This pun is confirmed later in the story by Montresor’s reference to the ‘mason-work’ when he is walling his hapless rival up inside the catacombs.

‘The Cask of Amontillado’ can be productively linked – via comparative analysis – with a number of other Poe stories. Its murderous narrator links the story to ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘ The Black Cat ’; its focus on revenge and the misuse of alcohol links it to ‘Hop-Frog’; the alcohol motif is also seen in ‘The Black Cat’, while the use of jester’s motley also suggests a link with Poe’s other great revenge tale, ‘Hop-Frog’, where the title character is a jester in the employ of a corrupt king.

The live burial motif is also found in Poe’s story ‘ The Premature Burial ’ and ‘ The Fall of the House of Usher ’.

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10 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’”

There is something very odd about this story – the title emphasises the ‘amontillado’ which the murderer uses as bait for his victim, and the victim dreamily repeates the word as if it refers to something very unusual and precious. But unless there is something special about this cask – and no one suggests that there is, it could just as easily be the kind of wine you can buy in Sainsbury’s – and I frequently do, to use in cooking. And there is the dismissal of the man who ‘cannot tell Amontillado from sherry’ – but actually of course Amontillado is sherry. And it’s not an ‘Italian wine’ but Spanish. Did Poe know all this? is he implying that the two are not the aristocrats they seem and claim to be, but a pair of drunken louts? or did he use the name because it sounded exotic, without knowing what it was…

I think he used the whole ‘Amontillado is sherry’ thing as a joke. Fortunato and Montresor are an awful lot alike, after all. Even there names mean the same thing.

This is one of my favorite Poe stories and a fantastic analysis!

Thank you! It’s one of my favourites too – and there are plenty of fine stories to choose from :)

Nobody likes a clever dick, do they?

Sent from my iPad

Iago–yes, that is very clear intertextuality. I’ll bring that in with my Othello unit with my seniors.

Reblogged this on Greek Canadian Literature .

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Interesting analysis. Revenge can not resolve conflict

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