Journal

In The Cask of Amontillado, Allan Poe creates a character, Mostresor, using the narrator’s first-person point of view to shape the whole thriller. This is a story happening in a gloomy and clammy vault. The narrator designs a perfect and delicate murder with using the weakness of his friend, Fortunato, to revenge him. We could only enter the narrator’s psychological world, following his trick step by step and being trapped.
It began in a carnival season, people wearing amusing dresses and masks. However, beneath them, something evil has been planned. Fortunatos’ characteristic is shaped by the motely, innocent and straightforward. Such dress style is contrary to vindictive mind of Montresor’s own. The hilarious carnival season is opposite to the damp and eerie vault. There is and excellent point saying that the reader can interpret the coats of arms (human foot crushing serpent whose fangs are in heel) in different ways. He and his noble family are like the foot crushing a serpent that has bitten them, or on the other hand is he and family are actually like the serpent. Even though Allan Poe uses the narrator’s viewpoint to describe and judge the scenes he sees, in fact Allan Poe indicates the Montresor’s twisted mental, moral and emotional character in an indirect manner by his narration. It is clever that the writer actually stands behind the narrater’s words to judge the narrator secretly.
Besides, what makes me impressive is that even if we read Montresor’s mental world with his own point of view and perhaps the scenes we see cannot be trusted, we can still hear a series of sound effects vividly. There are only the sound effects in The Cask of Amontillado making readers believe it is objective from reality. I think in Allan Poe’s works, he is fond of murdering people by burying people. For instance, in The Black Cat, the narrator buries his wife’s body and one of black cats which is alive. Obviously, he really enjoyed it.