Lenny Portes
English 102-8420
Literary Analysis
I’m going to kill my friend of many years today and I have it all planned out its going to be great I can hardly wait for tonight. These are the thoughts of a character by the name of Montresor in the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe. A Frenchman who happens to dislike Italians but for some reason he has found himself living in Italy which is one of the first signs that tell me something is definitely wrong with this man “Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack” (page 1) not really something you say about your “friend” or about the people you choose to surround yourself with. Somehow we are supposed to believe that these thoughts are of a “Sane” man that is just seeking revenge, but can anyone who is actually sane plan out a murder let alone one on a “friend”? You see we are led to believe that this man by the name of Montresor is a “normal”, “sane” man that is simply just seeking revenge for “The thousand injuries”(page 1) that Montresor has borne throughout the years from the hands of Fortunato. Would a man with an actual reason to seek out revenge such as murder have to repeatedly try and justify why he is doing so? Montresor spends most of the beginning of the story telling himself how he must do this, and that it is the option he has “I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong” (page 1). I actually believe that we are dealing with a unstable man that would have been better suited as a character in One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest and really isn’t seeking revenge and nor does he have a legit reason to kill Fortunato besides the fact that he is crazy.
Charles Manson, The Menendez brothers and Montresor, What do all of these people have in common? They all committed premeditated murder and they...