Your Perfect Partner in Crime for Revenge

Revenge, is it not something that has driven you to do things unimaginable? If so, then I
think you might find Montresor as someone relatable to yourself. But before we begin to
compare and contrast your personality and qualities against Montresor’s we need information on
him. How about Poe’s well-known story, “The Cask of Amontillado”? This is the story of a man
(Montresor) who vows his revenge on a friend who dared upon insulting him. This friend
happens to be Fortunato whose name is ironic at the end of the story seeing how his
(Fortunato’s) story ends in an unfortunate ending. So long story short Montresor finds Fortunato
at a carnival in Rome, Italy in a drunken state. He then takes advantage of this and lures
Fortunato into his (Montresor’s) catacombs to taste the so called “amontillado” of Montresor’s
lies. Then when they (Montresor and Fortunato) have reached deep into the catacombs
Montresor pushes Fortunato up against a wall in a dead end corridor and chains him (Fortunato)
up to the wall by the waist. Then Montresor proceeds to build a wall of mortar and stone using a
trowel and seals Fortunato to his death leaving him there to rot. Montresor’s act of murder
probably seals off your point of view on him and does not let you fully process the fact that there
is more to Montresor than what is explicit in the story. By looking at what is implicit in the story
one can see that Montresor, was just a clever man whose ego was too big to deal with the fact
that someone might be better than him which (of course) resulted in Montresor being jealous and
angry.
Jealousy is something that all of us experience at one point in our lives at the very least. It is up
to us whether or not we act upon it. Montresor takes action and while it is not explicitly said, the
story hints at Montresor’s envy of Fortunato at various points in the story. It is interesting that in
the story Montresor starts listing what Fortunato has and is and even compares himself to
Fortunato when he says “In this respect I did not differ from him materially; --I was skilful in the
Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.” From this sentence we get the
idea that Montresor is comparing himself to Fortunato and where he finds a way to be better
than Fortunato he does. In this sentence he says that he buys largely whenever he can as if
saying that he has a lot of money and is challenging Fortunato to try to out buy him. He also
says in the story that he was once happy like Fortunato, but now isn’t with a comment on it,”
‘Come,’ I said, with decision, ‘we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected,
admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no
matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible………’” Montresor’s use of
past tense in the highlighted sentence clearly states that he is no longer happy because if this
were so then Montresor probably would’ve said something like, “You are rich, respected,
admired, beloved; you are happy as I AM” instead of what he said in reality. Another place in
the story where Montresor hints at jealousy is at the beginning of the story when he says, “The
thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I
vowed revenge.” The thousand injuries were probably humiliation seeing how throughout the
story Montresor appears to be rich and powerful. We can conclude then, that the insult was
probably an event that involved Fortunato degrading Montresor below him (Fortunato) which
was the breaking point for Montresor. Montresor, though, is an unreliable narrator with this
sentence and leads us to believe that this is a story of revenge where Fortunato is the
antagonist and deserves punishment when in fact Fortunato was the PROTAGONIST which
leads us to the second characteristic of Montresor; his way of being sly and cunning of nature
throughout the story like the fox who ate the gingerbread man in the 1875 St. Nicholas tale in
which the gingerbread evades everyone who chases him and taunts them (like Fortunato did to
Montresor) until he reaches a river in which he cannot not pass without someone’s help
(Fortunato can’t find the amontillado in Montresor’s catacombs on his own) which introduces
the antagonist of the story, the fox (Montresor). The gingerbread man then has to rely on the
fox to get him across the river (Fortunato needs Montresor to lead him through the
catacombs). While crossing the river with the gingerbread man on his tail, the fox says, “‘You’re
too heavy for my tail, jump on my back’” and then continues with this until the gingerbread
man is on his nose as they are nearing the river bank (Montresor putting Fortunato in front of
him when nearing the dead end corridor). Then when they reach the river bank the fox flips the
gingerbread man in the air and eats him ending the gingerbread man’s short lived life (when
they reach the end of the corridor Montresor chains up Fortunato to the wall thus ending
Fortunato’s story).

Montresor provides many clues of his plan and even taunts Fortunato with sly little comments
like when Fortunato says that he will not die of a cough and Montresor’s response is, “True--
true”. Montresor then proceeds to give Fortunato even more wine as if he had it all planned
out and knew that in order for his plan to succeed he needed to keep Fortunato drunk. His
(Montresor’s) reason for having more wine was to ward off the cold. Another thing that hints at
the sly planning of this is that Montresor put Fortunato in the lead, therefore making it easier
to attack from behind when they reached the dead end. He was also clever by hiding the
supplies for his wall beneath a pile of bones which are then used to disguise the newly built wall
as something that was always there.

The third trait is anger within Montresor. One can infer that someone who has enough jealousy
to come up with a plan to kill the envied person has a lot of hatred. Then to carry out that plan,
it is reasonable to think that there was enough anger-fueled hatred to follow through without
remorse or feelings/second thoughts whatsoever. The tone of most of the words Montresor
used when it came to talking about Fortunato were aggressive or heavily wrapped in deep
emotions that were most certainly not something to be taken lightly. He says near the
beginning of the story that the thought of Fortunato’s death made him smile, “I continued, as
was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the
thought of his immolation.” which is a pretty dark thought that does not land lightly on the
heart nor is it something to take lightly.

So as one can see Montresor is driven to murder based on 3 traits that interconnect with each
other and lead to one another in a seemingly endless cycle. When a clever man has jealousy it is
a dangerous thing as envy itself is already dangerous because it can lead to anger and both
combined never equal something that ends peacefully. Then by adding a clever mind such as
Montresor’s it is like adding that extra pepper to the already spicy salsa, the flavor just gets
spicier and the aftermath of eating a spoonful of it gets more complicated and it gets harder to
solve the problem at hand (which in the case of the salsa would be trying to not pass out before
you get some milk or water). In the case of Fortunato it was not getting cornered before the
wine completely took over his senses and feelings which left him vulnerable.