Comparing The Tell Tale Heart And The Cask Of Amontillado

What kind of reason would you need to kill someone, especially someone close to you? In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator killed to get rid of an obsession. In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, the hubris narrator, Montresor, murdered because he had been insulted. In both short stories, the narrators planned their murders in very precise manners. As a result, their victims would have never thought of being killed by someone so close to them. The unnamed narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart" meticulously planned out the murder of his roommate, someone who’s close to him, someone who lives with him. The old man is afraid of thieves, shown by him putting bars on the windows and fastening …show more content…
The hubris quality the narrator is down in his code of arms, “A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.” To make his goal easier, Montresor chose to target Fortunato when he is most vulnerable; sick and drunk. Montresor used Amontillado to lure Fortunato in, knowing that Fortunato takes pride in being able to tell different wines apart by just tasting them. Montresor led Fortunato into a catacomb full of nitre, where he also fed Fortunato more wine, making him increasingly sick and intoxicated. Montresor and Fortunato proceeded farther into the catacomb, where Montresor would chain Fortunato down and build a secure wall around him. When the wall has been close to finish and there came no reply from Fortunato when Montresor called him, Montresor threw a torch in the opening of the wall and pushed the last stone in to complete the wall. Throughout the course of the story, the reader knew that Fortunato was leading him to his own death, but Fortunato had no clue, showing dramatic