Essay On The Cask Of Amontillado

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edger Allen Poe is a short story that has gone down in history. Edgar Allen Poe the author of “Cask of Amontillado” was a very deep, haunting writer who believed that people should be able to read a story in one sitting. Therefore he perfected the short story. In him believing this he wrote short stories like “Cask of Amontillado” that start in the middle of the story in the rising action. This is called “in medias res” or in the middle of things. Him doing this shows that Poe does not follow the Freytag’s Pyramid. The reader doesn’t know what has happened in the beginning of the story, there is no background telling the reader what happened following up to why the protagonist wants to kill Fortunato, and the reader is not provided with the main characters name until the end of the story because to Poe it does not really matter. It is a classic example of an unreliable character because the reader does not know why Montresor wants to kill Fortunato. The narrator tells the reader that Fortunato has insulted him but because it is not said what exactly happened he is considered an …show more content…
In each of his short stories evil always prevails and the victim always is terminated or fails. Also in ever one of his stories the climax or the creepiest part of the story happens at midnight. In “The Cask” the victim is placed into the corner and sealed up by bricks at midnight and left to die. Poe definitely perfects the creepiness he is trying to portray by using midnight, because at that period of time and still even today midnight is when everyone should be asleep and when the crazies come out. “It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier” (Poe, p. 719). If this was at noon in the middle of the day the story would not sound as creepy and there would not be the suspense that Poe was trying to