The Cask of Amontillado Term Paper

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A writer can choose any narration style to presents his story to the readers but he should choose that point of view which gives us more cathartic effect and can connected to story easily. The author chooses first person narration style to give the reader a particular perspective. We can see by the fact that the narrator of this story, Montresor, seems unreliable. Montresor doesn’t reveal every detail so this makes him an unriable narrator. Montresor himself is confused and vague about why he is so angry with Fortunato. He claims that he has suffered a thousand injuries from Fortunato with the last straw being an “insult”, the reader has no other information about the insult that Fortunato did. Montresor insists that his revenge must be drastic,but we the reader doesn’t be sure whether Fortunato deserves death or not. It would be logical to assume that Fortunato wronged Montresor in a terrible way seeing how angry Montresor is.

However, if Montresor is insane, unreasonable, or overly sensitive, it would be logical to assume that Montresor is just overreacting or behaving like a psychopath. This is the effect of using an unreliable, first person narrator; the reader simply can’t be sure about Montresor’s justifications. The reader would have a more objective perspective most likely with Fortunato’s side of the story if the author tells the story from him. The writer may have three choices: Montresor, Fortunato, or a disconnected narrator if he wants to tell the story in different way. If Fortunato had told the story, the whole perspective would have been different and we can say that whole story would have been totally different. We can see the story is full of unanswered questions and confusion. If we may have learned something more about the insults that Fortunato did, we can rely on the narrator but it seems the whole story is about his perspective so it’s easy to guess that the fact is not presented properly and narrator only states his point of view. It seems unlikely that Fortunato actually did or said anything insulting. Even Montresor was putting the last brick in the wall, it is not clear that Fortunato really understood what was happening to him or why. He would not have been an effective teller of this story.

Montresor is the guy telling the story, so he represents something of the writer also after all, the write wrote the text to present something. He is also likely to have some of the writer’s habit, so we can say that this story depicts the real intention and feelings of the writer as well. He tries to express himself by writing. If we see the names of this story, these don’t sound like real people us. The author somehow giving imaginative story to us but we can’t change the fact that the narration style suits Montresor a lot and we feels like this is a real story. Narration style seems Montresor presents his idea with bias. We can guess that he is making all up and he wants us to know it. There are many advantages of the first person narration over third person narration especially is we consider about this story. According to Cheryl Wright, first person narration "can evoke a stronger emotional attachment with readers; from the first instance, the reader connects with the main protagonist. It is his/her voice, thoughts and feelings being portrayed; therefore, this is the person the reader is most likely to bond with". This first-person style of narration establishes a more personal connection between the reader and the narrator, who in this case is also the main character.

The narrator often talks to the audience in a very familiar tone, as if he knows the reader: "You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat" (617-618). This is one of the first lines of the story, but it is spoken with trying to show the narrator were good friends with the reader. This allows the narrator to open up right away and tell his story fully and in detail. The sanity of the narrator shows that he is an unreliable narrator. Famous reviewer and critics, Leonard W. Engel states that:

In this story, then, enclosure has a dual aspect. While it is Montresor's main source of delight in planning his revenge, it does create momentary flashes of panic which almost disrupt his carefully planned revenge. One wonders if on a subconscious level Montresor is not trying to isolate, and enclose, a part of himself and a neurosis he hates—symbolized by Fortunate: Once his victim is walled up and Montresor's neurosis is in a sense buried and out of sight, he believes he will probably regain some measure of sanity. (4)

Montresor’s point of view is also extremely hideous and with bias. This suggests that maybe Poe had some mixed feelings about writing. He is a murderer. From a meta-fictional perspective, Poe, through Montresor, might be asking or showing about the one’s own experience, or the experience of others. It suggests that he fears that the very process of writing is somehow violent. Montresor is not a realizable narrator. We know that a man capable of such a cold-blooded act can’t be completely sane, and we see no evidence that Fortunato has done any of the things Montresor accured him of doing. But all in all Poe’s choice of Montresor as narrator is the perfect choice for this horror story.

Other narrator might have also worked, but Montesor’s point of view narration style would certainly have worked better than Fortunato. We certainly would not experience quite the same horror as when we hear Montresor talk about his unholy acts. We might have had the facts but not experienced the same reaction. The writer uses the first-person point of view so Montresor could tell his own story and attempt to justify his unjustifiable actions. We hear Montresor's voice when he tries to justify his horrific plan:

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 I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. (191)

It is obviously told in the first person because the narrator uses first-person pronouns and shares with us his thoughts. This can show that Montresor is not a reliable narrator. We know that a man capable of such a cold-blooded act cannot be completely sane, and we see no evidence that Fortunato has done any of the things Montresor accuses him of doing.

Montresor is thinking as he is totally right and Fortunato is totally wrong, and he commits this heinous act because he is the narrator, and this makes Poe's choice