Fear And Death In Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado

When thinking of death, the fear of dying comes to mind. Fear and death will forever be associated in a person’s mind because no sane person wants die. Edgar Allan Poe is known for his twisted mind when it comes to his stories. Death is always a constant factor in his stories, and those deaths have sometimes resulted from fear. Poe’s use of fear and isolation shapes his writings into what they are, mysterious and intriguing. Without these constant themes, Poe’s works might not be as famous as they are. In Poe’s short story, The Black Cat, it starts out with a man who is being punished with execution for murdering his wife. He walks the reader through the events of what happened. He speaks of his uneventful childhood and then goes on to describe …show more content…
This story is all about revenge and how one man feels as if he has been wronged, therefore he takes the punishment of the other into his own hands. Montresor believes that Fortunato has wronged him in some way, although there is not evidence in the story that Fortunato has in fact done anything to Montresor. Montresor decides himself that he is going to to the judge of what has been done and that he’s going to decide the punishment for it. He tricks Fortunato by asking him to go with him into the vaults to taste what he think is Amontillado. Its thereafter that Montresor gets Fortunato into a small crypt and then begins to wall him up. The drunken Fortunato sees all of this as a prank at first, but when he comes to his senses he starts to yell for Montresor to let him out and the fear of this all not being a joke becomes surreal. Montresor was more than serious about all of this. Soon thereafter silence engulfs the vault and Fortunato is dead. For fifty years, Montresor carried this story with him and it is now that he is just confessing. With his confession comes a sense of freedom. “Having carried Fortunato in his mind and heart, Montresor feels free at last. When Montresor confesses after fifty years on his deathbed, remorse is not paramount (Confession 57). Although Fortunato thought him and Montresor were friends, its …show more content…
The narrator states that the outside of the house looks gloomy and depressing, as well as the inside being spooky and mysterious. Everything that surrounds the house seems to have some kind of deathly, evil look to it. There were decaying trees, murky ponds and the house was disintegrating all together. As the reader meets Roderick and Madeline is obvious that the house could possibly symbolize the lives of the Ushers. Madeline who is sick dies in the story and Roderick decides to bury her in the tomb below the house so scientist would not want to examine her. While reading to Roderick one night the narrator starts to hear noises that mimic the story. He soon comes to realize that Roderick has been hearing these noises all along. He believes that they had buried Madeline alive and it was her struggling to get out. Its at this moment that madline appears at the doors and attacks Roderick. He soon dies from fear and the narrator runs from the house. Madeline’s character throughout the story is somewhat secondary to the narrator and Roderick until the end. “This sylph-like creature [Madeline], so attenuated and frail, seems to slip through the story like vapor, all the more mysterious for that and for her incredible power displayed in the conclusion” (House of Mirrors 228). Poe’s use of Madeline being buried alive puts the fear that most people already have back in the reader’s mind.