It is mankind’s human nature to be overcome with jealousy to a point where they feel the need for revenge. The Cask of Amontillado, written by Edgar Allan Poe, is a fictional short story where the narrator expresses his thoughts and choices as it leads up to the act of revenge. The narrator, Montresor, leads his “friend,” Fortunato, into the catacombs by tricking him into thinking that there is amontillado, and he buries him alive in the catacombs. Human beings are not born evil, but instead are born good. It is their surroundings and the choices they make that influences and pushes them over to the dark side. Poe uses many literary devices, like point of view, symbolism, and foreshadow, to demonstrate how one has turned evil. Point of view
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In The Cask of Amontillado, Poe uses symbolism in order to support his argument by including a more detailed and a deeper meaning to a specific, everyday object. In the middle of the story, Fortunato started to cough so much, he could not reply to Montresor. The narrator then decides to go back home, pretending to care about the health of his friend, but Fortunato insists that they continue to seek for the amontillado. Montresor and Fortunato drinks wine from a bottle and start to talk about Montresor’s family and his family’s coat of arms and motto, which is, “‘A huge human food d’or, in the field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.’ ‘And the motto?’ ‘Nemo me impune lacessit.’” (Poe 92-93) Although the readers cannot actually hold the true meaning of the coat of arms, the picture on it represents “one of the golden foot crushing a snake which has its fangs embedded in the heel of the foot.” The symbol on a coat of arms is a representation of one’s family and is a one of a kind. It is a distinctive emblem, a heraldic device or a symbolic object that is important to the organization, or family. The motto “Nemo me impune lacessit” means “no one provokes me with impunity” in Latin, which illustrates that whoever had hurt, or betrayed them in the past, will not get away it. This shows that the narrator is serious about the
In The Cask of Amontillado, Poe uses symbolism in order to support his argument by including a more detailed and a deeper meaning to a specific, everyday object. In the middle of the story, Fortunato started to cough so much, he could not reply to Montresor. The narrator then decides to go back home, pretending to care about the health of his friend, but Fortunato insists that they continue to seek for the amontillado. Montresor and Fortunato drinks wine from a bottle and start to talk about Montresor’s family and his family’s coat of arms and motto, which is, “‘A huge human food d’or, in the field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.’ ‘And the motto?’ ‘Nemo me impune lacessit.’” (Poe 92-93) Although the readers cannot actually hold the true meaning of the coat of arms, the picture on it represents “one of the golden foot crushing a snake which has its fangs embedded in the heel of the foot.” The symbol on a coat of arms is a representation of one’s family and is a one of a kind. It is a distinctive emblem, a heraldic device or a symbolic object that is important to the organization, or family. The motto “Nemo me impune lacessit” means “no one provokes me with impunity” in Latin, which illustrates that whoever had hurt, or betrayed them in the past, will not get away it. This shows that the narrator is serious about the