Examples Of Evil In The Cask Of Amontillado

It is a very arguable subject on whether or not people are born with good intentions, and therefore taught by others the ‘evil’ side of their personality. Whether it is the absence of ethical conduct in human nature, or just the way one perceives a situation, evil seems to be prominent in our everyday lives. Humans seem to have a moral code that follows them with every decision they make, yet despite the laws of morality and society, people of this world still seem to behave inhumanely because of the act of self-preservation, human interest, and who exactly the authority figure is at the time.

Ha Jin’s “Saboteur” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” explain how both Mr. Chiu and Montresor chose to execute their plot of revenge. Both main characters seek out their revenge, however the differences are who is affected and how the revenge is plotted. Mr. Chiu was consumed by his anger and does not consciously contemplate his plan or who might be hurt in the process. Montresor, however, deliberately plans everything and his plot of revenge comes in a quiet, but dark manner.

One is a story of revenge and murder, the other a story of greed and materialism. On the surface, the short stories appear quite different, but at their heart, a similar drive beats within the three main characters, determining their actions and altering the pathways of their lives. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe is a story of the proud Montresor, obsessed with getting revenge on the foolish Fortunato. “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, is a story of a beautiful woman who felt she belonged to an upper class but was forced to live a banal, ordinary life. While the plots of these two short stories are different, the central characters all share the overarching quality of an obsessive pride— hubris. This hubris comes in many

In the crucible so far, Miller has used 2 definite types of character personas to represent good and evil. Corrospondingly, the evil is represented by the people who are using the exuse of witchcraft to inprisoin people they do not like. For example, when abigail grows jealous of Elizabeth proctor because of the cold shoulder mr proctor gave her after they made love. Being the supposed saint of salem, she uses this power to then use marry warrens doll to hide a needle into it, then stabs herself claiming “a needle were found struck into her belly,” was caused by elizabeths doll that marry warren gave her. (Miller 72)

For years, many have questioned the so called “evil” that seems to be inside of people. There have been multiple experiments set to find the answers to these questions. Although, the real question is, why do people act the way they do? Rob Reiner, director of the movie A Few Good Men is about Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer, who is assigned to defend two US Marines accused of murdering Pfc. William Santiago. With the help of Lt. Sam Weinberg and Lt. Cdr. JoAnn Galloway, Kaffe brings the accused Marines, Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, into court to prove that they are innocent of murder because they were “just following orders” (Reiner). However, why did Dawson and Downey follow the orders, if they knew the result would be hurting another? Maybe it was because of the situation, or how obedient the two Marines were, or many it is just the plain and simple evil at work. Nevertheless, two articles that mention the experiments to test this is “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. The results gathered from these experiments confirms the belief of hidden wickedness inside human beings. Plus Zimbardo himself made an hypothesis that good people can become evil in the blink of an eye. He based this hypothesis on his prison experiment. Both of these authors addresses how their experiments determine how obedience and the situation can determine the outcome, which just supports

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor explore the depths of evil and what makes an individual truly evil. They both question are understanding of evil and the different forms it may present itself in. These stories do an equally good job at getting the reader to see true evil first hand, even though they present evil in much different ways. As humans we can differentiate evil from good most of the time there is usually a clean cut line from a morally just action from one that is not.

In “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, the theme man’s inhumanity to man is distinct. In the beginning, Montresor lures Fortunato to his home to taste a wine named Amontillado.

Evil is the force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and the sin that harms even the holiest of people. In “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, the nature of evil is revealed through the corruption of reverend Parris which ultimately leads to devastation of society and reverend Hales good intentions. During 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, the witch trials begin as girls who were caught dancing in the forest pretend that they are under the influence of the devil. When the court is introduced in Salem many innocent people get accused of witchcraft so that the accusers can simply satisfy their own desires. Although both Parris and Hale are spiritual leaders, Hale shows integrity as he sticks for what his goal is, whereas Parris

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows how evil may be spread by ordinary citizens who are mindless agents or unwitting victims. In this Play the people of Salem are persuaded that there is supernatural events in their town and begin prosecuting for it. First, in act 3 when Mary tries to go to the court to blame Abigail and the other girls including herself for lying about the spirits, Danforth says to mary, “Then you tell me that you sat in my court, callously lying, when you knew that people would hang by your evidence?“(101), Mary then agrees to the statement. Evidently, Mary and the other girls used the towns fear of the supernatural to get all the people that they dislike in jail or killed.

The Source of Evil in The Crucible Arther Miller’s play The Crucible is based off his experiences during The Red Scare in the 1950s where allegations were most prominently against Hollywood influencers. The play is an allegory to McCarthyism where wild accusations are made without proper evidence to support the claim which is seen multiple times in the courts of Salem. The goal of making accusations was to get ahead and gain power or possibly revenge. McCarthy wanted to gain power and leverage over the people of Hollywood, where the people of Salem wanted land and money or vengeance. The movement was fueled by the American fear for the spread of communism as in The Crucible where the trials are fueled by fear of judgement; whether by God or the courts.

Although “good and evil” have varying meanings to different people, the words are defined by both morality and actions. Good and evil aren't black and white concepts since there are different sects on the two topics. Evil is both inherent and not; some people are influenced to do bad things that shape them into “evil” beings. The dictionary definition of “good” is defined as being morally righteous. One of the separate sects is the idea that “good” people themselves can turn “bad” and vice versa. In addition, Influence is a very powerful thing that can end up controlling and changing the way someone acts and thinks. In the book, “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, the concept of judgement and influence convey senses of “evil” in Salem.

A villain fighting the hero is usually the way we envision evil in media such as television, music, and books. In real life however evil is not as clear but the definition we can best use is about evil being the inverse of good. For example if giving is good stealing is evil because it is the opposite of giving. Another example would be more complicated such as white collar crimes. These crimes are nonviolent and financially motivated in which the criminal is seemingly normal but is evil because the criminal steals from their victims. This is the banality of evil in which because the criminal does not look like a monster they are not inherently evil, if anything the normality in their dress makes the crime even more wicked. The banality of evil is pervasive in the way it can hide the real evil behind a mask of a common person. Evil is also the suffering of children especially because we take their innocence away. It seems easy to have the suffering of one in order to prevent the suffering of many but this is a twisted form of logic if the one suffering is a child. This type of evil is indefensible and I do not mean disciplining children I mean the excerpt of The Brothers Karamazov. Both evils are essentially the result of a corrupted good in Mr. Eichmann’s case he followed the wrong orders, and for Ivan children’s happiness was turned into children’s suffering.

Evil is the force in nature that governs and gives rise to the wickedness. Evil is a very complex subject that one may consider unpleasant. However, evidence shows that evil does exist, and has existed since the beginning of mankind. No Country for Old Men displays the works and consequences of evil forces. No Country for Old Men illustrates evil through the greed and lust of money. According to God, “Money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6/10). Money has a strange phenomenon that can result in misery beyond human perception. In the Coen brothers movie an evil individual discovers that he can obtain a vast amount of money, after a drug deal that went awfully wrong. This event causes a chain reaction of murderous rampages, which claims the lives of many people. The murderous rampages were led by the devil himself. The devil took the form of a human being named Anton Chigurh. Chigurh is an extremely evil individual with no conscience. According McCarthy, Chigurh impersonate a police officer and kills an innocent man simply to steal his car (7/309). The code of law that Chigurh represents is a code of evil and criminality. He murdered everyone that attempted to cross his path without

Violence is a vice that drives individuals to engage in immoral or criminal behaviors and actions. Often, violent individuals conduct violent acts whose outcomes they had not meant to occur. The literature piece The Cask of Amontillado has its storyline based on a carefully premeditated murder scheme orchestrated by Montresor on Fortunato. Throughout this story, it is made clear to the reader that violence takes not only physical but also emotional and psychological forms of harm. Montresor’s thirst for violent revenge against Fortunato does not just arise from nowhere. The story starts off with a statement offered by Montresor, where he reveals to the

It has been calculated that 13-million South Africans go to bed hungry every night while a third of all the food produced in South Africa (costing up to R60-billion) is wasted each year.13-million South Africans makes up about 25% of the country’s total population which means that a quarter of the people living in our country are going to bed without a meal each night. Most of the waste is happening on farms, in storage and during the manufacturing and distribution process of foods