The Injuries of Montresor

The Injuries of Montresor

“The Cask of Amontillado” is considered one of Poe’s best tales. It is particularly memorable because of the macabre revenge of Montresor, a villain who committed his crime with impunity (unlike the hysterical narrator of “The Black Cat”). The more or less established interpretation of this tale is that it is an early example of “unreliable narration,” a precursor of Ford Madox Ford. The short story is Poe’s attempt to show the inner working of a disturbed mind distorted by sinister shades of depravity and insane jealousy. There are those who seek and triumphantly point to signs of modernism in any work of an author born earlier than, say, Henry James, and find this to be the foremost quality in any early work of literature whatsoever. The “thousand” injuries themselves and Montresor’s discrediting descriptions of Fortunado’s behavior are felt to be the exaggerations of an unstable mind. Yet, this is far from the only merit that this tale can possess for the reader.

Of the two characters, we have only limited knowledge, but with a little touch of Romantic whimsy, we can attempt to presume some details. Montresor is the scion, and most likely, last surviving member of a noble house. His forbearers mold in the charnel house beneath his dimly lit palazzo. Wearing a sable cloak and with a smoking flambeaux in hand, he treads the echoing halls of his ancestral home, casting melancholy glances at the dark portraits of ancestors who rot beneath his feet. He is unpopular, perhaps more in his unhappy mind than in reality. He rightly prophesies that his own servants will desert him during the carnival, in this case, much to his advantage. He blames Fortunado for his misfortunes, and we observe that whether callously or stupidly so, Fortunado seems oblivious of the wrongs he has perpetrated on Montresor. The “thousand injuries” may be hyperbole numerically, but to a sensitive aristocrat, a lifelong insult could be felt in a thousand ways. Fortunado, obviously, is the fortunate one, “one to be respected and even feared” in the community, but we feel that Montresor’s description here is tinged with irony. He is one of the nouveau riche, a Trimarchio, who now has more influence in the city than Montresor. His friends crowd around him merely to feed off his wealth. He is a quack in every respect, with the exception being his ostensible connoisseurship in wine. It is sometimes the case that when the vulgar philistine gains wealth, he will cultivate some elite hobby that is dependent on the size of his purse and pursue it with the resources that his store of coinage can offer. One is under the impression that connoisseurship for him is an affected “status symbol,” wherein Fortunado collects the most expensive and rare vintages, or else a sign of gross gluttony, as he is intoxicated during the carnival. During the frenzy of the carnival, Montresor is meaningfully lucid, and we can see how he uses the surrounding disorder to his advantage. For such as Montresor, wine collecting is a melancholy reminder of happier days. He might view the vintage year with the finest feelings of regret and nostalgia; wine drinking for him is a way to experience and discriminate among fine and delicate flavours, flavours that have a particular poignancy from being bottled in specified years past. We note that his wine is stored alongside the bones of his ancestors.

Although Fortunado’s dress is evidently not inappropriate for the occasion, we cannot help but feel a slight revulsion. The fool is dressed as a fool. For one of such supposed wealth and influence to carouse in clownish attire through the streets seems an example of the most ludicrous vulgarity. There is something obnoxious about his behavior to anyone’s standards of nobility and grace, particularly Montresor’s. One can imagine what an absurd and despicable figure he must have cut in his tight fitting, striped outfit. Montresor, in obvious contrast, mentions that he is wearing a black silk mask.

In the exchange of dialogue between the two men, Montresor knows Fortunado’s weaknesses and plays skillfully to his vanity. Montresor mentions that he has purchases the Amontillado, and has doubts that it is genuine. Fortunado cannot concede that Montresor could possibly have found such a rare variety. Fortunado is a man with a destructive variety of “common sense,” who deflates one’s dreams and hopes to his standards, who knows well the boundaries of what is “possible.” One encounters a brick wall when one tries to probe his capacity to fathom life’s subtleties with any degree of imagination. The word “Amontillado” is incredulously repeated by Fortunado, while Montresor goads him by letting “drop” that he will consult with Luchesi. Fortunado, in his extreme vanity, cannot bear the comparison. Fortunado demands to assert his expertise, which is demanding, as it were, to be led to his perdition.

Fortunado has that aggressive “macho” attitude which causes him to deny his illness (the cold) in his eagerness to proceed. One cannot deny the impression that Fortunado may be insisting on “helping” Montresor judge his wine primarily as a way of asserting his superiority. Repeatedly, Montresor discourages Fortunado from proceeding. Montresor remarks that Fortunado is too important a personage to risk damaging his health, and Fortunado almost seems tempted to turn back, but a carefully calculated mention of rival Luchesi is enough to motivate Fortunado to proceed through the damp catacombs. Montresor offers Fortunado a draught of the Medoc to ease his cough, which Fortunado greedily accepts, and does not offer a word of gratitude. He is perhaps one who takes gifts for granted, as due to his estimate of his personal greatness. The first drink is shared, accompanied by ironic toasts. Another drink, De Grave, is consumed with even more voracity. When he has finished gulping the drink, he throws the bottle in the air carelessly with a debonair flourish of wastefulness; it must shatter on the catacomb floor. Fortunado taunts Montresor’s unpopularity again (“You are not of the brotherhood”) with the allusion to the masons; Montresor counters with the trowel, an unexpected visual pun that makes Fortunado, for a fleeting moment, flinch.

Fortunado is too intoxicated to resist until the wall is for the most part complete. His first reaction is to scream, and to prove that no one could possibly hear him; Montresor echoes his cries with shrieks of surpassing strength, a deed of cruelty almost too wanton. Fortunado feebly resists by nervously commenting that it must all be a joke. Montresor does not histrionically gloat over his victim, nor recount the reasons for his revenge in melodramatic fashion, as a stereotypical villain might. He gives no explanation. As Montresor walls in his victim, he merely parrots his responses as if in a death knell (‘the Amontillado,” “the Amontillado,” “for the love of God ”). As cool in deadliness as the catacombs themselves, his revenge is meticulous in his spidery knowledge of the consequences of the carnival and his victim’s weaknesses; the fly in fact rushes into the web of its own accord. The goad has been the debatable existence of Amontillado.

Even if we are to view Montresor as an aristocratic crusader, we must concede that his revenge could not have been ultimately successful in restoring his lost glory. Even if he has satisfied his most burning hatred, he was not ultimately effective in restoring the happiness he had lost. With a degree of certitude we can conclude this because his act of revenge took place fifty years prior to telling his tale, and there are no indications to the contrary. By now, Montresor has joined his ancestors in the crypt, and the bones have crumbled to dust. The Palazzo Montresor has been bulldozed; the crypt everlastingly sealed by a thick layer of cement; a strip mall now stands in its place. In pace requiescat!

Notwithstanding the demise of the character, “Fortunado” as an idea and a living phenomenon has flourished. Are we not surrounded by more examples of such “Fortunados” today than ever before? Is he not part of the crowd which simultaneously affects an “elite” hobby and performs “networking” at “wine-tasting” gatherings; do we not see him in possession of a fleet of “stretch SUVs”; at the highest peak of fortune, is he not observable hurling expletives with red-faced fury at a professional sports team that he owns? The victory is his. The Injuries of Montresor“The Cask of Amontillado” is considered one of Poe’s best tales. It is particularly memorable because of the macabre revenge of Montresor, a villain who committed his crime with impunity (unlike the hysterical narrator of “The Black Cat”). The more or less established interpretation of this tale is that it is an early example of “unreliable narration,” a precursor of Ford Madox Ford. The short story is Poe’s attempt to show the inner working of a disturbed mind distorted by sinister shades of depravity and insane jealousy. There are those who seek and triumphantly point to signs of modernism in any work of an author born earlier than, say, Henry James, and find this to be the foremost quality in any early work of literature whatsoever. The “thousand” injuries themselves and Montresor’s discrediting descriptions of Fortunado’s behavior are felt to be the exaggerations of an unstable mind. Yet, this is far from the only merit that this tale can possess for the reader. Of the two characters, we have only limited knowledge, but with a little touch of Romantic whimsy, we can attempt to presume some details. Montresor is the scion, and most likely, last surviving member of a noble house. His forbearers mold in the charnel house beneath his dimly lit palazzo. Wearing a sable cloak and with a smoking flambeaux in hand, he treads the echoing halls of his ancestral home, casting melancholy glances at the dark portraits of ancestors who rot beneath his feet. He is unpopular, perhaps more in his unhappy mind than in reality. He rightly prophesies that his own servants will desert him during the carnival, in this case, much to his advantage. He blames Fortunado for his misfortunes, and we observe that whether callously or stupidly so, Fortunado seems oblivious of the wrongs he has perpetrated on Montresor. The “thousand injuries” may be hyperbole numerically, but to a sensitive aristocrat, a lifelong insult could be felt in a thousand ways. Fortunado, obviously, is the fortunate one, “one to be respected and even feared” in the community, but we feel that Montresor’s description here is tinged with irony. He is one of the nouveau riche, a Trimarchio, who now has more influence in the city than Montresor. His friends crowd around him merely to feed off his wealth. He is a quack in every respect, with the exception being his ostensible connoisseurship in wine. It is sometimes the case that when the vulgar philistine gains wealth, he will cultivate some elite hobby that is dependent on the size of his purse and pursue it with the resources that his store of coinage can offer. One is under the impression that connoisseurship for him is an affected “status symbol,” wherein Fortunado collects the most expensive and rare vintages, or else a sign of gross gluttony, as he is intoxicated during the carnival. During the frenzy of the carnival, Montresor is meaningfully lucid, and we can see how he uses the surrounding disorder to his advantage. For such as Montresor, wine collecting is a melancholy reminder of happier days. He might view the vintage year with the finest feelings of regret and nostalgia; wine drinking for him is a way to experience and discriminate among fine and delicate flavours, flavours that have a particular poignancy from being bottled in specified years past. We note that his wine is stored alongside the bones of his ancestors. Although Fortunado’s dress is evidently not inappropriate for the occasion, we cannot help but feel a slight revulsion. The fool is dressed as a fool. For one of such supposed wealth and influence to carouse in clownish attire through the streets seems an example of the most ludicrous vulgarity. There is something obnoxious about his behavior to anyone’s standards of nobility and grace, particularly Montresor’s. One can imagine what an absurd and despicable figure he must have cut in his tight fitting, striped outfit. Montresor, in obvious contrast, mentions that he is wearing a black silk mask. In the exchange of dialogue between the two men, Montresor knows Fortunado’s weaknesses and plays skillfully to his vanity. Montresor mentions that he has purchases the Amontillado, and has doubts that it is genuine. Fortunado cannot concede that Montresor could possibly have found such a rare variety. Fortunado is a man with a destructive variety of “common sense,” who deflates one’s dreams and hopes to his standards, who knows well the boundaries of what is “possible.” One encounters a brick wall when one tries to probe his capacity to fathom life’s subtleties with any degree of imagination. The word “Amontillado” is incredulously repeated by Fortunado, while Montresor goads him by letting “drop” that he will consult with Luchesi. Fortunado, in his extreme vanity, cannot bear the comparison. Fortunado demands to assert his expertise, which is demanding, as it were, to be led to his perdition.Fortunado has that aggressive “macho” attitude which causes him to deny his illness (the cold) in his eagerness to proceed. One cannot deny the impression that Fortunado may be insisting on “helping” Montresor judge his wine primarily as a way of asserting his superiority. Repeatedly, Montresor discourages Fortunado from proceeding. Montresor remarks that Fortunado is too important a personage to risk damaging his health, and Fortunado almost seems tempted to turn back, but a carefully calculated mention of rival Luchesi is enough to motivate Fortunado to proceed through the damp catacombs. Montresor offers Fortunado a draught of the Medoc to ease his cough, which Fortunado greedily accepts, and does not offer a word of gratitude. He is perhaps one who takes gifts for granted, as due to his estimate of his personal greatness. The first drink is shared, accompanied by ironic toasts. Another drink, De Grave, is consumed with even more voracity. When he has finished gulping the drink, he throws the bottle in the air carelessly with a debonair flourish of wastefulness; it must shatter on the catacomb floor. Fortunado taunts Montresor’s unpopularity again (“You are not of the brotherhood”) with the allusion to the masons; Montresor counters with the trowel, an unexpected visual pun that makes Fortunado, for a fleeting moment, flinch.