Comparing Amontillado 'And Lamb To The Slaughter'

“Others believe that ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ was inspired not by a person, but by a widespread fear of being buried alive,” (Robinson). This quote suggests the idea that the story wasn’t about a person but the collective fear of being buried alive back in that time period; that deeper meaning is a truly interesting way of viewing the story as a whole. If you also view the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter,” written by Roald Dahl, as a whole and compare it with “Cask of Amontillado,” written by Edgar Allen Poe, you will notice how alike they are. The four points being brought up that support the idea that “Cask of Amontillado’ and “Lamb to the slaughter” are one in the same are: themes of the stories, protagonists, setting, and victims. At …show more content…

First story example, “May he rest in peace!” (Poe 5). This quote from “Cask of Amontillado” is the character Montresor exclaiming after he had closed up the wall on the dying Fortunato. The theme of the story is murder and revenge on Fortunato for cursing his family’s name. Thus the theme is murder. The first example for “Lamb to the Slaughter” is, “All right,” she told herself. So I killed him” (Dahl 4). Our main character, Mary Maloney, in “Lamb to the Slaughter” has killed her husband over devastating news the reader is unaware of. Assuming that she killed her husband from an action he did, the theme is about murder and revenge against her husband. In short, the similarities between “Cask of Amontillado” and “Lamb to the Slaughter” are that both of the main characters are murderers and their deep-rooted motive is revenge. Both short stories’s protagonists (Mary Maloney and Montresor) face moral dilemmas in the same way, with their killing motive and the consequences for murder being …show more content…

After Monteser kills and hides Fortunato, he knows he succeeded in getting away with it because: “For half a century now no human hand has touched them,” (Poe 5). Poor Fortunato was tricked into blindly following Monteser’s into his wine cellar expecting to grab a bottle of the most expensive Amontillado (wine) and as a result he gets tied up and barricaded behind the cellar walls. Firstly, Mrs. Moloney knew that she had gotten away with murder and her reaction was: “And in the other room, Mary Moloney began to giggle,” (Dahl 9). Her reason for giggling was probably because not only did the police eat the murder weapon, but she also killed her unknowing husband effortlessly. Her husband mirrors what Fortunado did when Monteser lured him; however, with Mr. Maloney, Mrs. Maloney lured him with dinner. To conclude, with the evidence provided, it is clear that both victims of both short stories have more similarities with one another in the sense that they were killed as a result of blindly following someone they thought they could trust. In addition, both victims were