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Revenge is Montersors Revenge Revenge Revenge is the deliberate act of inflicting injury in return for injury. Revenge also is the ghost that haunts one mans soul for almost fifty years in Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. Is vengeance really satisfied by Montersor in Poe's tale? No, not only is it not satisfied, but also ironically he damns himself for all eternity!
At the beginning Montersor gives us his two criteria for revenge: A wrong he says is undressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unrepressed[d] when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. (Harris 335) Are these two criteria met? No retribution seems to over take Montresor (Harris 335). But, that is just how it seems.
From the onset of the story the narrator [Montresor] suffers from a guilty conscience (Gruesser 1), which means that Montersor did suffer. Poe also makes no indication that Montersor ever told Fortunato why he is executing this motiveless evil (Harris 335). Therefore, neither of Montresor's requirements of vengeance are accounted for. In reality Montersor permits himself to be transformed from family avenger into a cold-blooded murder. He [Montresor] count[s] on Gods judgment as the final instrument of his revenge. He kill[s] his enemy by leading him into sins of pride, vanity and drunkenness (Cooney 195).
Here Montersor fails also. When Fortunato poses a last prayer for mercy to his murderer and his God, For the love God, Montersor! Yes, I said, for the love of God (Poe 153). To this, Montersor [is] deaf and when the prayer receive[s] a merciful hearing in heaven, Montersor's stratagems backfire[s]. Fortunato, lucky as his name suggests [is] saved; Montersor damned (Cooney 196).
This is reiterated by Gruesser when he writes going through with the murder, Montersor boldly defies God, damning himself for all time. Cooney also states that Montersor misses the irony at the beginning of his own confession, You who so well know the nature of my soul (Poe 149). This implies that he has been confessing to this priest for quite a while, but has not been confessing all of his sins; this in turn makes all of Montersor's confessions in vain. Cooney also shares with us that because of these false confessions instead of being instruments of salvation they become instruments of damnation. Here, surely, is the irony of a confession without repentance, an irony that makes the entire plan double back upon the doer (Cooney 196). So now not only does he have the blood of Fortunato on his hands, but the wrath of God on his head.
In Poe's last line In pace requiescat, let him rest in peace, Montresor prays for the soul of Fortunato, but as with the telling of his confession Montersor realizes that he does not accomplish his vengeance on any level. He did not even achieve the sole requirements for his own brand of retribution. And now must face his own soul and God because, Even now, when on his deathbed Montersor confesses all his sins, he is deluded in thinking himself forgiven (Cooney 196). Still, unfortunately, with this small prayer and confession, for all eternity Montersor will be remembered as a heartless, sadistic executioner. Bibliography Cooney, James. The Cask of Amontillado: Some Further Ironies.
Studies in Short Fiction. 11 (1974): 195 - 196. Gruesser, John. Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. Explicator. Spring. 1998: 129 - 30.
EBSCOHost. Available. web = 7 &# 038; image 1. x = 30 &# 038; image. 1 y = 12. 24 Oct. 2000. Harris, Kathryn Montgomery. Ironic Revenge In Poe's The Cask or Amontillado.
Studies in Short Fiction. 6 (1969): 333 - 335. Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask Of Amontillado. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth Mcmanhan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 5 th ed.
Upper Saddler River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. 149 - 53.
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