Sunday, November 15, 2015

In the short story "The Cask of Amontillado", why did Montresor kill Fortunato?

Montresor never goes into great detail about his reasons for killing Fortunato, however, he claims that he kills Fortunato because of an insult. Montresor states that:



The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.



In the story, Montresor seems to have an overly developed sense of pride or honor that requires him to respond to something like a minor insult with murder. After he is insulted by Fortunato, Montresor concocts an elaborate plan in order to redress the wrong. He comes up with a ruse about a rare cask of wine and uses it to lead Fortunato deep into the underground vault under his family estate. Once there, he tricks Fortunato into going into a dead end tunnel, shackles him to a wall, and covers the tunnel with bricks. Why Montresor thinks that this is the appropriate response to an insult, no one knows.

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