The Motive For Murder In Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado (The Cask) is a dark story, like many of those for which he is known. However, this one varies slightly from the others in some subtle ways. The Cask is told from the perspective of an antagonist, like a handful of other stories, and features an unreliable narrator recounting his actions and, in some cases, transgressions. While The Cask features a murder, a common theme in Poe’s works, it does leave one important element to be discovered. While the audience becomes intimately familiar with the inner workings of Montresor’s mind and bears second-hand witness to the actions of the nights of Carnival, the motive is left completely to the wonderings of the audience. Several attempts have been made by varying sources to identify or ponder this motive. “The Motive for Murder in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ by Edgar Allen Poe” by Elena Baraban of …show more content…
While, to many, those motives remain shrouded in mystery, Elena is able to use quotes, arguments, and analyses in order to present a concise case for a Montresor with a clear motive. Her essay not only sheds light on this particular work, but is able to weave a convincing portrait of Poe as well. Poe, like Montresor, tells his story simply for the purpose of letting it be known. He doesn’t aim to lead in either direction, and presents the facts and allows the reader to determine the emotions and motivations involved. Despite an axiom often misattributed to Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is much more than just a cigar and, especially in the world of Poe, the reader finds that there is more to everything than it seems on the surface. Whether or not it’s what Poe originally intended, a convincing argument can be made that Montresor was clearly motivated, and this is what Elena Baraban attempts, and succeeds, to