Amy Waugh

November 7, 2018

Catacombs and Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”

As Montresor leads Fortunato through the maze of the Montresor family catacombs in
“The Cask of Amontillado”, Poe creates the setting saying, “Its walls had been lined with human
remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris” (Poe 798).
This creates a disturbing and accurate picture of what the catacombs were like. Erin-Marie
Legacey remarks of how the catacombs in Paris are “a network of subterranean tunnels carefully
lined with human bones” (Legacey 509) and this description aligns with the image Poe presents
to his readers.
The human bones are not the only realistic attribute of the catacombs that can be seen in
Poe’s story. The niche where Montresor encloses Fortunato is also reflective of how the real
catacombs were set up. As mentioned before, the catacombs are a maze where “the main
tunnels, about one meter wide and three to four meters high, are themselves connected by
smaller tunnels whose walls contain horizontal graves or burial niches… in which the corpses
were placed” (Encyclopaedia 521). It is curious that Fortunato does not recognize the niche that
Montresor leads him to for what it is until too late.
The realistic setting of human bones and the niche graves would be enough to make this
story the creepy gothic masterpiece it is, but there is another element that Poe added that turns up
the eeriness of Montresor’s actions. The acoustic factor of the catacombs comes into play when
Fortunato begins his hysterical laughter. Montresor “had difficulty in recognizing [the laughter]
as that of the noble Fortunato” (Poe 799). The lack of an echo in the catacombs twists
Fortunato’s voice and laugh into something distorted. Catacombs were often used for religious
activities because of the lack of reverberation they produced. Otherwise, “they could not be used
for prayers, meetings and religious functions because the echoes would have created difficulties
in concentration and meditation for the devotees due to the poor speech comprehension” (Gino
583). This is the same concept that turns Fortunato’s vocals into something sad and
unrecognizable to Montresor.
There may well be many other aspects of the real catacombs that are seen in Poe’s “The
Cask of Amontillado”, but the human bones, grave niches and lack of an echo are strong and
prevalent attributes that make the story into the disturbing read that it is.
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 4. 2nd ed. Detroit,
MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, p. 521-522.
Gino, I., Amelia, T., & Ahmad, Q. (2015). “The acoustics of the catacombs.” Archives of
Acoustics, 39(4), pp. 583-590.
Legacey, Erin-Marie. “The Paris Catacombs: Remains and Reunion beneath the
Postrevolutionary City.” French Historical Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, Aug. 2017, pp. 509–
536.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Literature: The Human Experience, Edited by
Richard Abcarian, Richard, Bedford Bks St Martins, 2018, pp. 795-800.