American Literature

    Edgar Allan Poes stories have often explored the darkest parts of human nature madness, murder, and deceit are key elements in many of Poes short stories. The Cask of Amontillado  is no exception, the main character gives into the most basic of sins, pride. Montresor has become a cruel caricature of a man, whose madness allows him to coldly wall up Fortunato in the walls of the Montresor family catacombs. His madness is a manifestation of his pride and the decline of his status and the very concept of aristocracy as a level of society. In this story, Poe employs the imagery of the underground vault, to imply an alteration of consciousness that is at our most primal level and allows human beings to act out against one another without emotion or understanding. Though Montresor is a living character, we gain a better understanding of him, not through his narration of the deed, but in the physical setting of subterranean decay. In the vaults, the reader is in the mind of Montresor as he moves beyond moral concepts of right and wrong, drawn into the darkest recesses of the human psyche and the decadence of a disappearing aristocracy.

    To fully understand the imagery of the catacombs, and in particular that of the Montresor catacombs, it is important to understand the notion of a decaying aristocratic class.  As the tides of political and intellectual change began to turn in the 19th century, the individual and social structures of class and self-identity began to change. The once strong aristocracy began to crumble as new political systems and social movements made them obsolete. In Montresor, we see a man who is on the edge of the past and the future (White 550). He has neither the money or power of his ancestors, or the freedom from that same ancestry, to build the life he desires. Instead he dwells in death and the intricate designs of his particular insanity.

    The catacombs symbolize the physical manifestation of the Montresors deteriorating family lines, in the same way they resemble the darker recesses of Montresors madness. In the simplest sense, the tombs are a representative of the past glory of the family, if nowhere else than in the individuals buried within its walls,  Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead  (Poe 1570). These walls are overflowing with the demon of familial pride which drives Montresors crime. Fortunato observes as he travels deeper under the earth with Montresor,  These vaults ... are extensive  (1569), implying a family that goes back far into the past. The walls of the chambers even carry the Montresor crest,  Nemo me impune lacessit  (No one insults me with impunity) drawing the parallels between the present circumstance to soon befall Fortunato and the strong family pride which acts as a motive for Montresor

    Though little in Montresors narrative points directly to a motive for the murder of Fortunato, instead simply describing his motive as a  thousand injuries  (Poe 1567) the action of the story itself draws the connection between Montresors delusions of grandeur and his despicable actions. By drawing Fortunato into the catacombs, he is taking revenge not only on Fortunato but what he represents. Reclaiming his family pride is akin, in his mind, to defending its dying dynasty. As sole heir, with no heirs of his own, without any wealth, he is abundant in pride only. It is the only legacy he can leave behind, as testament to the Montresor line. In this state of mind, he is not simply a stranger to friendship or brotherhood, but has deteriorated into a madness that recognizes a sovereignty to the family name alone.

    Part of this particular madness is Montresors ability to redefine justice as a sole servant of family and personal pride,  From his point of view ... Montresor feels justified in killing on behalf of his  fatherland,  his family,  in the same way that a citizen or subject of more recent times can feel justified in killing on behalf of his fatherland, the nation-state  (White 551). He exists solely within the realm of his own delusions and feelings of denied grandeur. More importantly, in understanding the depth of Montresors madness, is that he is not seeking resolution in the murder of Fortunato. By burying Fortunato alive, he is keeping alive his hatred and at the same time defending his pride. He is rebelling in the feelings that he has been denied something, in killing Fortunato he is attempting to reclaim that lost glory. His rules of conduct are therefore governed by something quite different from that of his contemporaries, as in his madness he has separated himself from the present and the future. Instead he lives in the past hierarchies of class and aristocratic distinction. Fortunatos main crime, therefore becomes his ability to resemble this immaterial enemy of change. Montresor sees nothing immoral in killing Fortunato, on the contrary he feels himself to be merely a part of a dying tradition, defending itself from the outside world as it slowly falls to pieces around him, like the bones of his ancestors. 

    Not only does the character of Montresor reinforce the idea of the family catacombs as a symbol for a decaying past and the labyrinth madness of the man, but the tight construction of the story itself also supports this notion. Only four pages in length, this story is powerful in its briefness. It would be underestimating Poes talent and calculation as a writer to not acknowledge the purposeful nature in choosing to tell of these characters within such a short time span. Poe could have started the story with the  insult  that prompted the murder or even the plotting that led up to the event. However, Poe viewed the ability to manipulate to the effect upon the reader, as a strength of the short story genre,  During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writers control ... having conceived with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents  ( The Importance of the Single Effect  884). In  The Cask of the Amontillado,  Poe uses this single-effect method to its full potential, amplifying a single act into a message to illustrate the decay of the aristocracy, Montresors deceit and madness, as well as the wounded to his honor inflicted by Fortunato. 

    As critic Stephen Dougherty explains in his essay on the history of Gothic writing as related to the teachings of Michel Foucault, Poe employs what is termed a kind of  Gothic of cruelty ... obsessed with filiation and patrimonial inheritance, and it is inhabited by powerful, easily enraged, lascivious aristocrats whose perverted desires bring them into moral conflict  (8).  In relation to Montresor and his own motivations for killing Fortunato, chief among these is a retribution for bruised pride and family honor, which is already busy fleeing his home. His final decision and planning which culminate in the live burial of Fortunato in the family crypt, acts as a symbol of his own denial of the degeneration of not only his family name but the place of aristocracy in a changing world. This new world has no use for pure blood lines or family crests, crisscrossing genealogies that have weakened the family, and could be seen as at least partially to blame for the breakdown of Montresors mind.

    Despite the fact that the reader is never privy to the detailed planning of Fortunatos murder, the decision to use the family catacombs for the deed tells us a lot about the attention to detail. Montresor knows that he cannot be caught, his insanity is deep but it is secluded in a realm of his mind that is rapidly disappearing in the real world. He knows that in the outside world, he will be judged and condemned for his actions. Surrounded by the bodies of his dead ancestors, he must have felt himself part of an approving audience. On a most basic level, it seems quite possible that this may have prompted the decision to commit the deed here as well. Not only is it a secret place that will escape the view of the law, but it is also deeply personal and is a means for him to prove himself to his ancestors. It is, more importantly, a way for Montresor to prove to himself that he is a true aristocrat, a true Montresor. Equally, if seen as the depths of his own mind, the crypt allows Montresor to be in touch with a much darker part of himself. He can abandon reason, separated from the balance of the real world and surrounded by the world he has lost by accident of being born too late.  It is his sacrifice to this  noble  world, almost religious in its connotations. Listening to Fortunato scream within the walls, Montresor remarks more to himself than his doomed captive,  Yes, I said, for the love  of God  (1571). 

    Like the twisting tunnels of the catacombs, there is no real end or beginning to the madness of Montresor. Born in the wrong era, he clings to notions of grandeur that are nothing but illusion. He has only his pride, in a fit of madness and fueled by pride, he coldly walls his companion Fortunato into the walls of his familys burial tombs. It is a death inside a death, a new chamber added to the decay of Montresors mind and a sign of his own future doom. Though the reader never sees him suffer retribution, like many of Poes characters he pays in the end for his sins. He will die out and with him his family will die as well. The darkness of the tombs, symbolizing his madness and perverted humanity, will hold his secret and his family for eternity, but will not prevent the inevitable. Montresor has serviced only his pride but in his mind he has won a final battle for the family in the slaying of Fortunato. Much like the doomed aristocracy of the family legacy and Montresors sanity, it lay secret and protected within the darkness.