Theme Of Abandonment In The Cask Of Amontillado

Even in death, Edgar Allan Poe couldn’t avoid tragedy. Arthur Hobson Quinn, prominent Poe biographer, once said “The fatality, which always accompanied Edgar Poe’s living actions, followed him after death and the [his] tombstone was broken before it could be erected” (Quinn 643). Poe’s first taste of success came when he won “a short-story contest with his [story] ‘MS Found in a Bottle’” (Introduction II). He would go on to publish hundreds of short stories, poems, book reviews, and thoughtful essays, but he would never, during his lifetime, achieve the level of success his first contest win provided. Poe’s lifetime was one of tragedy: his dad left him at birth, his mom died when he was a toddler, and he was eventually disowned by his adopted …show more content…
The story deals with the theme of abandonment, a theme that reoccurs throughout Poe’s life. Almost everybody Poe cared for abandoned him or died. When the narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado” locks Fortunato deep within the catacombs and leaves him to die, the narrator enacts a very personal form of abandonment. When the narrator chains his victim to the wall, the victim doesn’t even bother to fight: “he was too much astounded to resist” (Cask 18). The narrator takes the time to lay a brick wall in front of the room that holds his victim. The slowly passing time, gives both the narrator and the victim time to contemplate what is happening. Eventually the victim realizes that the exercise is not a joke, he lashes out at the cruelty, “A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back” (Cask 19). This barely seemed to bother the narrator, he continued on with building the wall between the victim and his freedom. Poe knew this feeling of personal abandonment. He used it to build anxiety and terror in his