"Keg of amontillado": summary and reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) - American poet and writer, an outstanding master of mystical and detective stories, as well as works in the horror genre. Considered a representative of American Romanticism.

The story "The Barrel of Amontillado" was written in 1846, at the same time it was published on its pages by the popular American women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book, in which, by the way, many of Poe's short stories were published.

By the nature of the construction, this story is a confession of a murderer, the story of one terrible revenge that the main character prepared for his offender.

In the article we have given a summary, description and analysis of the "Keg of amontillado", as well as the history of its writing.

About the story

The entire text is written in the first person, in fact, this is a monologue-confession of a certain Montresor, a poor nobleman,whom Fortunato humiliated and pestered with ridicule. He, on the contrary, was noble and was a representative of a we althy noble family. However, the reader is not given the opportunity to find out exactly what kind of humiliation Montresor received from Fortunato - nothing is said about this in the text. Thus, we can attribute to the main character and suspiciousness. However, this makes the overall tone of the story even darker.

One can only guess where and when the described event takes place. It is very possible that we are talking about an unnamed city in Italy of the 18th century. At least the Spanish fortified wine Amontillado began to be produced and sold at that time.

History of writing

There is a legend according to which Poe wrote a story, impressed by a story he heard in 1827 in one of the fortresses of the US state of Massachusetts. The duel that took place on Christmas Day 1817 between two lieutenants Drane and Messi then ended in the death of the latter. The soldiers, who wished to avenge his death to Drane, lured him into the dungeon after getting him drunk, chained him to the wall and walled him up.

However, this is only one of several versions. There is also more prosaic information that Poe borrowed the plot from a short story by the French realist writer Honore de Balzac, published by him in 1843.

As for the family motto that Montresor pronounces: "Nemo me impune lacessit!" (translated from Latin: "No one will insult me with impunity!"), then it is borrowedwriter, most likely from Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which was published in 1826.

How "The Cask of Amontillado" was written

It is known that the story was the answer to Thomas Dunn English, an American writer, poet and politician. However, the beginning of the conflict was laid by Poe himself, who ridiculed English, a constant adversary, in his essays. In January 1846, there was even a fight, followed by notes in magazines and literary cartoons from both participants.

Eventually English wrote an essay en titled "1844, or The Power of the S. F.". We know that the plot included a story of revenge, but in general it felt like a very long and confusing text. Poe's story followed in a kind of retaliation.

Readers immediately noticed a number of references and correspondences in both texts. So, in the story of English, secret societies were mentioned, which was later reflected in the response story of Edgar Allan Poe. In it, Fortunato, walking through the underground gallery, mentions his belonging to the Masonic lodge - and English's story also speaks of a secret society.

He also tells about the sign - a falcon, which holds a snake in its claws. And in Poe's story, on the coat of arms of the Montresors, a foot tramples a snake that has sunk its teeth into its heel.

But Edgar Poe parodies English: to Fortunato's question to the protagonist whether he is a Freemason, Montresor answers in the affirmative and, jokingly opening the dominoes (hererefers to a masquerade costume - a long cloak with sleeves and a hood), shows the questioner the spatula that he was carrying with him.

In general, the whole underground passage scene in Poe's story, albeit with some stretch, can be called a copy of the dungeon scene in English's "1844".

Next, let's turn to the summary of Poe's "Keg of Amontillado".

Hero's Preface

The story, which is also called a short story because of its small size, begins with the words of the protagonist:

I endured a thousand insults from Fortunato, but when he insulted me, I swore revenge.

Closed by nature, Montresor does not announce his decision to anyone, he does not even make it clear to the offender that he was offended. However, he is going to take revenge on him, and carefully prepares his revenge. It seems to the main character that he has foreseen all the little things that would interfere with his plan or would betray him as a murderer. For he defined the credo for himself as follows:

I not only had to punish, but also to punish without any danger to myself. The offense is not avenged if the avenger is punished; she is equally not avenged even when the avenger does not take care that the offender knows who is taking revenge on him.

Therefore, he appoints his revenge at the time of the carnival, when many people walk the streets of the city unrecognized in masks.

The next step of the avenger was to make sure that not a single servant remained in his own estate - having learned from the words of the owner that hewill return late, they simply fled, also attracted by the carnival festivities.

In the dungeon

Montrezor found Fortunato at dusk - he was pretty tipsy, he was wearing a Harlequin tights and a cap with bells. Having managed to captivate him with a fiction that he bought a whole barrel of amontillado on occasion (about 500 liters), and knowing that Fortunato boasts of his reputation as a wine connoisseur, Montresor leads the victim to his castle and invites him to go down to the dungeon, where supposedly the precious amontillado is located.. By the way, this wine at that time was really very expensive - Montresor knew how to lure Fortunato.

Every now and then mentioning a certain Lucresi, who could help him in assessing a rare wine, and endlessly with false solicitude worrying about the he alth of Fortunato, who coughs, the main character brings him to quite predictable impatience and a desire to try amontillado as soon as possible.

So they end up at the very end of the underground galleries. Fortunato, who along the way was additionally drunk with medoc (a kind of honey alcoholic drink) by a hospitable host, without any suspicion and without feeling threatened by him, enters the niche that Montresor pointed out to him. The killer has everything ready - he throws a pre-prepared chain with a lock on him and chains him to the wall.

Final

Next, Montresor collects stones and makes a wall out of them, wanting to immure Fortunato in a niche. At first he does not understand what is happening, then he quickly sobers up and begs to be released.his. For a while, he even thinks that it was a joke and laughs, wanting to hear the owner laugh back. But Montresor only repeats his words. His words echo ominously. Finally, the last stone is placed in the wall. The immured prisoner fell silent forever. The final words of the protagonist are:

I made an effort and fitted the last stone; I covered it with lime. I leaned the old mound of bones against the new wall. Half a century has passed and no mortal has touched them.

Montresor ends the story with the Latin saying "In race requiescat!", which means "May he rest in peace!". Traditionally, this phrase in Catholicism is abbreviated as "R. I. P." are carved on burial sites, tombstones, as well as speaking about the recently deceased.

Analysis

Although the center of the event part of the story is a murder, the story is not a detective in its purest form - after all, the reader will not find an investigation here. Therefore, you should not compare "The Cask of Amontillado" with such Poe stories as "The Stolen Letter" or "Murder in the Rue Morgue".

At the same time, the motive for the murder can be called the most obscure for the reader. There is practically no exposition in the story, except for a few words of the protagonist. Either Montresor really got it hard from Fortunato, or not at all, and the suspicious hero invented everything. In any case, the reader will have to guess for himself about the degree of Montresor's resentment. And this is the peculiarity of not only the story, but also the narrator.

Ohcharacters

According to many reviews of "The Cask of Amontillado", the mention of "thousands of humiliations" by the main character already makes him look a little crazy, but the prudence and forethought of his actions, however, reduce the likelihood of this version.

The character of Fortunato also did not seem convincing enough to subsequent criticism. Allegedly a connoisseur and connoisseur of expensive wines, while traveling through the stone galleries, Fortunato drinks a whole bottle of De Grave at a time, by no means cheap French wine, which is served to him by the owner. Needless to say, such an act does not honor him. In addition, he must have known that his drunken state was unlikely to allow him to reliably assess the authenticity of the amontillado, and that was why he went down into the dungeon.

Thus, when analyzing the work "The Barrel of Amontillado", it should be emphasized that the authenticity of the statement of both characters caused great doubts among readers. However, we must not forget that the story is built in the form of a confession, that is, it is written in the first person. Therefore, all inaccuracies can be reduced only to the peculiarities of thinking and vision of the protagonist.

Recurring themes. Confession

Po's favorite topics are the ones we'll discuss in the description of "Keg of Amontillado". They are used in many other works of the writer.

So, for example, the story under discussion, built in the form of a confession of a murderer, repeats with this technique the work "Black Cat", in which an alcoholic tells how he killedcat and then wife. And the same technique is used in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart", in which the protagonist's monologue, as the reader can easily see, clearly indicates his mental disorder.

Buried Alive

The theme of immuring the body in various variations is present in the two stories already mentioned. Poe also uses the theme of being buried alive, for example, in the story "Berenice" (however, the scene in which the main character finds out that Berenice is still alive, visiting the body before the funeral, was later cut out according to the requirements of readers shocked by the "excessive cruelty" of the work).

In "The Fall of the House of Usher", Lady Madeleine was lowered alive into the dungeon and placed there in a coffin. Finally, we find the same theme in the story "The Premature Burial", written in 1844, that is, shortly before the writing of "The Cask of Amontillado".

Literary scholars have evidence that the stories with the buried alive in the work of Edgar Allan Poe appeared under the influence of the then popular story about Anna Hill Carter, the wife of the governor of Virginia. Later it was found out that she suffered from narcolepsy, accompanied by bouts of sleep paralysis (in those years these were unknown diseases to medicine). In 1804, she had another seizure, death was recorded, and she was buried in the family crypt. After some time, someone heard screams coming from the tomb. The coffin was opened and found buried alive. After this incident, Anna lived another 25 years. Much has been said about this case, but it was consideredunreliable, because it was not officially recorded. Nevertheless, in 1834, the story of Anna Hill Carter was published in the Washington Post, and thus became known to an even wider circle.

Masked Villain

Mask of the Red Death.

In the first of the listed works, the dwarf-jester, offended by his master-king, under the guise of a buffoon's action, arranges a cruel revenge, as a result of which the offender, together with his retinue, dies a painful death, and the jester safely disappears.

We have provided a summary, description and analysis of "Keg of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe.