History Literature / TheCaskOfAmontillado

!!The Tropes of Amontillado:

%% Short stories use double quotes so please refrain from trying to italicize it

"The Cask of Amontillado" is one of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's best-known short stories, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady Book'', a popular magazine for women at the time. It tells of [[MurdererPOV a gruesome murder from the killer's perspective,]] [[AuthorAppeal a situation Poe wrote several stories about]].

''The Cask of Amontillado'' is one of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's best-known short stories, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady Book'', a popular magazine for women at the time. It tells of [[MurdererPOV a gruesome murder from the killer's perspective,]] [[AuthorAppeal a situation Poe wrote several stories about]].

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** According to Montresor, Fortunato "practises imposture upon (…) millionnaires" and is a man to be feared. This seems to mean he's a professional criminal.

** According to Montresor Fortunato "practises imposture upon (…) millionnaires" and is a man to be feared. This seems to mean he's a professional criminal.

* DrugsAreBad: Fortunato is already drunk at Carnival before he is lured to his doom by the prospect of taste-testing a cask of valuable wine. As he and Montresor walk deeper into the catacombs (used doubly as a wine-cellar), Fortunato is given more and more to drink, slowing his reactions to the revenge awaiting him.

[[TheCakeIsALie Montresor lures Fortunato by telling him he has obtained a pipe of Amontillado sherry.]] He mentions obtaining confirmation of the pipe's contents by inviting [[TheGhost a fellow wine aficionado, Luchesi,]] for a private tasting. Not one to be made better of, Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's house, where they wander in the catacombs. [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy Montresor keeps giving Fortunato drinks to keep him drunk,]] finally arriving at a niche, where Montresor tells his friend that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters drunk and unsuspecting, allowing Montresor to chain him to the wall.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is one of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's best-known short stories, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady Book'', a popular magazine for women at the time. It tells of [[MurdererPOV a gruesome murder from the killer's perspective,]] [[AuthorAppeal a situation Poe wrote several stories about]].

* EvilGloating: A narration by a Villain Protagonist fifty years after the fact could hardly be anything less than a good-old-fashioned villainous gloat session. Notably though, in the story, Fortunato actually comes to the realization that this is actually what Montresor wants. Montresor doesn't want to murder Fortunato as much as he wants the psychological satisfaction of mocking his anguished cries as it dawns on him that he was easily tricked into dying a slow death. In a final act of defiance, Fortunato refuses to play along, and replaces his panic with cold silence. This silence catches Montresor off-balance, and it's evident from narration that he was very confused and annoyed at being robbed of the chance to gloat properly. He even begins to feel "sick at heart" about what he is doing, because the sudden silence gives him no recourse but to actually consider the gravity of the act he is about to carry out. Even those fifty years later, there are still clear hints of Montresor being somewhat bitter about the fact Fortunato managed to outwit him at the end by taking all the fun out of his revenge.

* AndIMustScream: Fortunato gets entombed alive and left to die. In a moldy catacomb. With a nagging cough that may or may not be some kind of infection. And as if that weren't enough, the last thing Montresor does before sealing his tomb for good is to drop in a burning torch.
** May instead be a [[MercyKill Mercy Kill]], as the torch makes it far more likely Fortunato will asphyxiate.

* ReversePsychology: Montresor has made sure his servants leave his mansion for the night by explicitly telling them ''not'' to stir from the house in his absence, and he persuades Fortunato to keep going deeper into the cellars by telling him that he will just ask Luchresi instead, a man Fortunato feels is an inferior connoisseur of wines.

[[TheCakeIsALie Montresor lures Fortunato by telling him he has obtained a pipe of Amontillado sherry.]] He mentions obtaining confirmation of the pipe's contents by inviting [[TheGhost a fellow wine aficionado, Luchresi,]] for a private tasting. Not one to be made better of, Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's house, where they wander in the catacombs. [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy Montresor keeps giving Fortunato drinks to keep him drunk,]] finally arriving at a niche, where Montresor tells his friend that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters drunk and unsuspecting, allowing Montresor to chain him to the wall.

* TheGhost: Luchresi, a fellow wine aficionado and acquaintance to both Montresor and Fortunato. Montresor lures Fortunato deeper into the catacombs by frequently claiming he'll get Luchresi to do the tasting, [[{{Hypocrite}} which only makes the latter want the Amontillado more because he thinks Luchresi is a drunk and won't be able to savor it.]]

* {{Hypocrite}}: It's pretty ballsy for Fortunato to call Luchresi a drunk who doesn't appreciate fine wine when he himself is hammered on the stuff.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Fortunato repeatedly dismisses Luchresi as an inferior connoisseur of wine who "cannot tell Amontillado from sherry" when in fact Amontillado ''is'' a type of sherry, which one would assume a self-proclaimed connoisseur like Fortunato (even while drunk) would know. [[note]]Then again, what he ''might'' mean is that Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from "normal" sherry (presumably the more common fino), the same way one might not be able to tell prosecco from champagne, despite the fact that both are sparkling white wines.[[/note]] Additionally, the mere focus of the story is on Fortunato being willing to get drunk off his ass and chug expensive wine anyway, which is definitely not the actions of a great connoisseur.

* UnreliableNarrator: Montresor claims that the insults he's borne from Fortunato were grave enough to justify chaining him behind a wall to die slowly of starvation or suffocation. He also thinks condemning someone to die in such a horrifying way is an appropriate response to being ''insulted''. Worse, it's possible the insult in question was unintentional, or even entirely in Montresor's head.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is one of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's best-known short stories, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady Book'', a popular magazine for women at the time. It tells of a gruesome murder from the killer's perspective, [[AuthorAppeal a situation Poe wrote several stories about]].

* AluminumChristmasTrees: "Really? [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amontillado There's a wine named Amontillado?]] Wow, I bet they named it after the guy in that Poe story!"

The story's narrator, [[TheSociopath Montresor,]] tells the story of the day that he took his revenge on his friend Fortunato. [[OffscreenVillainy Angry over numerous injuries and some unspecified insult,]] he plots to murder Fortunato during Carnival, when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley.

** Some adaptations show a bit of what Fortunato did, for instance a 1953 radio play has him insult Mortresor's distinguished swordsman of an ancestor and steal his girlfriend.

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: Actually a sort of in-universe FunnyAneurysmMoment. A lot of people, picturing Fortunato's horrible death and the psychological drama preceding it, forget that he's described at the beginning of the story—and therefore remains throughout all the following events–''dressed in brightly coloured carnival motley, complete with a cap with jingly bells.'' He basically gets left to his death chained up in a bricked-up cellar for all eternity ''in a clown costume.''

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: Actually a sort of in-universe FunnyAneurysmMoment. A lot of people, picturing Fortunato's horrible death and the psychological drama preceding it, forget that he's described at the beginning of the story—and therefore remains throughout all the following events–''dressed in carnival motley.'' He basically gets left to his death chained up in a bricked-up cellar for all eternity ''in a clown costume.''

* FauxAffablyEvil: Montresor's behavior zig-zags between this trope and [[AffablyEvil more genuine affability,]] though the former seems to win out. While Montresor's narration maintains a polite enough tone throughout, calling Fortunato "his poor friend" at several points, his jovial attitude towards Fortunato in-story- amicably joking with his friend and expressing numerous concerns about his health- is all an act to lure Fortunato further into the crypt.

* IWasJustJoking: Inverted. Fortunato tries to invoke this on Montresor -- "Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! he! -- a very good joke, indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo -- he! he! he! -- over our wine --he! he! he!" --in one of his last-ditch attempts at saving his life, but it fails.

* IWasJustJoking: Inverted. Fortunato tries to invoke this on Montresor -- ""Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! he! -- a very good joke, indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo -- he! he! he! -- over our wine --he! he! he!" --in one of his last-ditch attempts at saving his life, but it fails.

->''[[Music/{{Chumbawumba}} You bricked me up inside the cellar wall\\

I just want some amontillado''

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* FamousLastWords: Fortunato's last words, at least as far as Montresor knows, are, "For the love of God, Montresor!"

** Montresor does quote a bit of gloating while Fortunato is oblivious. Another exchange, in much the same way:

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: The Finnish translation from 1959 has Luchresi's (the wine aficionado Montresor mentions) name spelled as Luchresi.