The Cask of Amontillado: Above and Below the Carnival

Edgar Allan Poe was a nineteenth-century American poet and fiction writer. His Gothic tales helped shape literary horror, and his detective stories helped establish conventions that mystery writers still use.

Poe is now a central figure in American literature. During his lifetime, making a living from writing was difficult. Even “The Raven,” the poem that made him widely known, reportedly brought him only a small initial payment.

The Cask of Amontillado

One of Poe’s best-known short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado,” appeared in the November 1846 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Amontillado is a kind of sherry. The title commonly used in Korean represents the Spanish word with a double l sound, while many varieties of Spanish pronounce that consonant closer to a y.

The Story

The setting is an unnamed Italian city during Carnival. Montresor believes a man named Fortunato has insulted him. The story is the account he gives of taking revenge.

Montresor meets Fortunato in the street and says he has bought a cask that may be amontillado. He counts on Fortunato’s pride in his judgment of wine to lure him into the vaults beneath his house.

Fortunato has already been drinking. As they descend, Montresor offers him wine and keeps invoking the cask. The promise of tasting it carries them deeper into the family catacombs.

At the end of the passage Montresor chains Fortunato inside a recess and begins to wall it up. Fortunato screams, tries to treat the situation as a joke and finally falls silent. We hear only the bells on his costume.

Montresor says that no one has disturbed the bones for half a century. The final words are a prayer for the dead: “In pace requiescat!”

Carnival Above, Death Below

Up on the street there is music and company. Below ground a man is being killed, with no crowd to hear him. The two places lie directly above one another.

That closeness is part of what I found disturbing. The open celebration and the hidden cellar can be read as two sides of the same person. Montresor keeps his manners even as he makes room for a desire that cannot be admitted in daylight.

The story shows how little Poe needs to make a scene oppressive. A dark corridor, a few bricks and a voice that seems altogether pleased to tell us what happened are enough.

Book Information

Complete Edgar Allan Poe, Korean collected edition

Author

Edgar Allan Poe

Publication date

November 23, 2018 (Korean edition)

ISBN-13

9788952794857

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