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"The Cask of Amontillado"- Tone Makes a Difference

            Poe's setting intensifies the tone of horror. Poe sharpens the reader's point of view when Fortunato and Montresor are walking down the stairs to the catacombs. He makes the reader want to shiver every time his story is read or told. The spiral staircase stairs leads down to a corridor, which goes to the crypts another horrific place. The crypt itself is a frightening and ghoulish place. "At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris" (76). The fact that there are human remains lined on the wall sets the horrific tone because if there were not any human remains on the wall then the crypts would be less ominous.
             Poe's plot also magnifies the tone of horror. From the very beginning of the story, the reader can predict that a murder will occur. Montresor says: "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge" (73). Montresor's family motto is "No one dare attack me with impunity" (75). This means that Montresor still believes in his family's motto and still abides by it. Another way Poe uses the plot to make the horror greater is the scene where Montresor is burying Fortunato. The author describes Fortunato's burial tier by tier. The horror involved in the entrapment of Fortunato is that the reader cannot conclude what Montresor is doing until he lays the final tier. After Montresor lays the final tier, the reader knows that Montresor buried his friend alive. This is an example of one of Poe's many uses of horror that changes the outlook of the story. Finally, at the conclusion of the story Montresor says how Fortunato was finally dead. "Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of the bones. For the half of a century no mortal had disturbed them. In pace requiescat. (May he rest in peace)" (78).


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1. Writing with style

Edgar Allan Poe exhibits his unique style of writing in "The Cask of Amontillado" as does Ralph Ellison in "Battle Royal". ... In "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison, and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, the authors make use of the different style techniques of foreshadowing, diction and vocabulary, setting significance, similes, and sight details in comparable ways. ... In every sentence in "The Cask of Amontillado", Poe uses very extensive vocabulary to create a tone of mysticism and suspense. ... Throughout the remainder of "The Cask of Amontillado", the setting continues to be ...

  • Word Count: 1443
  • Approx Pages: 6

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