The First Sentence

Every night he would watch the old man sleep. He found comfort in knowing that the eye was not watching him, that it could not see the true evil in him. While the eye was closed, so was the idea of killing the old man. It is not until the old man awakens each day that the struggle within him is apparent. This may be the reason why the narrator is so obsessed with watching the old man sleep. The actual act of murder, which the man believes was premeditated, was in fact a spur of the moment action. He toiled with the idea while the man was awake, that is, while he could see the "evil eye". However, while the eye was closed, the man was at peace. One night, during one of the man's "stalking" sessions, the old man awakens. The man goes into a paranoid frenzy, mistaking the beating of his heart for the beating of the old man's heart. During this frenzy, the man is afraid that neighbors will hear the beating of the old man's heart. This causes the man to take action. He quickly subdues the old man and kills him. He then takes extreme steps in disposing of the body, dismembering it and burying it under the planks in the floorboard. These extreme actions can be used as evidence to the paranoia that is taking over him. The fear of getting caught would be a normal reaction to someone who has committed a murder. However, the dismemberment of the body was not necessary since the man had ample resources to dispose of

The narrator dismembers the old man’s body after making sure he was completely dead. He then proceeds to conceal his body parts underneath the floor boards and makes sure he hides all evidence from the crime. The old man’s scream from earlier caused a neighbor to report to the cops and the narrator confidently invites him to look around. He states that the screams came from him after the nightmare he had and that the old man has left after the country. Being that he was so confident that they would not find out about the murder, he provided them chairs to sit in the old man’s room, right above where his body laid and engaged in conversation with them.

On page 6, paragraph 17 reads “Yet the sound increased- and what could I do?... a low, dull, quick sound- much such a sound as a watch when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath… I talked more quietly - more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased.” This show that the narrator is getting overwhelmed because he killed the man. This is important because the author is trying to build suspense for what’s to come. Another example of descriptive language is on page 3 paragraph “I heard a slight groan… it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief- it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.” This shows that somehow the old man could sense that something bad was about to happen to him. This is important because in the story he groans many times a night, so it was like he was just waiting. Descriptive language was very important to the story, in that described everything the narrator and old man

Perhaps the biggest element in this story is the use of irony, both verbally and dramatically. For verbal irony, we can see clearly at the end that what the narrator tells the officers and how he acts on the outside, (in a "cool manner", as he puts it) is much different than the chaos on the inside, as in what he wants to say. He sees the police as "villains" and wishes them to leave, but due to the situation, he had to keep them there. The more that he assures himself of his sanity near the end of the story and the more that he thinks that he is acting coolly, eventually leads him to reveal that he is the one that killed the old man after all. As for dramatic irony, since we know that the narrator is the one that killed the old man,

The narrator believes that he is "exact and ingulant" and the safest of men employed", which starts to build our curiosity not only of the man as he is gloomy and exact, but the plot. We start to expect that something bad will happen and even a major twist in the plot. In addition, we are told that he "perused the fixed eyes" and that the signal man gave "grave dark regards" which adds more to our little understanding of the mysterious character. ' Grave dark regards' is made to sound as a warning as I believe he talked slowly, unsure of the man's (narrator) up coming actions.

old man or his eye. It may be his phobia of the dark side, and

In The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allen Poe displays the theme of revenge. In the story, Montressor narrates the story and feels he has been wronged by Fortunado and vows for vengeance against him. Montressor attempts to justify his future crime to the reader. “A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.” (Poe 101) Fortunado is unaware of the wrong he caused Montressor by insulting him. Montressor feels that this is reason enough for his retribution. “The thousand injuries of Fortunado I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed for revenge.” (Poe 101) The thought of revenge is

Patricia Bray uses menacing diction to further establish a mood of suspense. She uses some select words like startled, darkness, and terror to establish a certain effect. “He could almost taste the terror as it rose up and threatened to overwhelm him.” As these words suggest in this quote from the passage.

The assisting quote is, “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.” This consists of several crucial fragments of information, one being that the initial sentence instantaneously bombards you with pure action and fear. This bombardment of absolute terror is done by the author using fast-paced words, such as, “instant,” or words of outright exertion, such as, “dragged,” instead of pulled, and because of the utilization of these words the author generates a hasty environment where you obtain the impression that the main character (narrator) has adrenaline pumping throughout his body and veins. Correspondingly, upon the first sentence the atmosphere is teeming with great suspension and apprehension, yet as the narrator continues to speak and reaches the following sentence, it immediately seems as if all of that adrenaline and excitement collapse to a level of genuine tranquility as he, “smiled gaily,” clarifying that the anxiety that had once vexed the psychopathic man has perished, never to be uncovered again. Next, this intricate quote is capable of being discovered virtually at the foundation of pg. 299, at the time the narrator illustrates the murder of the innocent elderly gentleman. Finally, this

Moreover, he tries to defend his sanity by explaining how wise and cautious he was as he was preparing for the murder. Every night he checked on the old man to make sure he got everything right and get ready to execute his plan. The narration lacks of a concrete explanation of the person or place to which it is addressed, which leaves much room for interpretation for the readers. What we can infer from the story is it is not addressed to the police officers since the narrator says he was successful in making them satisfied. Finally, the climax of the story comes as the revelation of the dead body hidden under the planks. Because the story is told as a memento, our estimation might be that the narrator is addressing a court official or personage who may influence over the judgment of the narrator. Therefore, the story that the narrator is telling is most accurately realized as an appeal for mercy rather than just being an appeal to be thought sane.

Many people in today's world use revenge to satisfy their troubles or situations they are in. Often times people desire revenge so bad that it ends up driving them crazy. In the short story, ¨The Cask of Amontillado¨ by Edgar Allan Poe, this situation is displayed perfectly. A character by the name Fortunato triggered Montresor, which resulted in him developing a deeply thought out murder plan. This is why the theme, revenge can drive a person crazy, fits with this short story. This theme works because the author shows it through foreshadowing, verbal irony, and indirect characterization.

Fear, suspense, and the upcoming revenge can be seen on the first line of the story when Montresor says, "The thousand injuries I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." This line prepares the reader for the whole development of the story; it gives the reader a sense of fear, tells him that there is going to be revenge, but keeps him wanting to know

The author purpose of telling this story is not about murder but more like convince about his sanity. The narrator start his story by saying he is super nervous but how do they know that he’s mad. Edgar Allan Poe is saying that how do we know he’s mad if we don’t know a person’s mind or feeling. So the purpose of the authors point is to convince us that the narrator has a disorder and act normal when he’s around the old man. Next, act in strange way when the old man is not looking. Like for example he examplains in the story “The tell-tale heart” “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually”. This quote not just explains his feeling about the old man eye but his anger and madness to kill him. According to Witherington Paul hi states in his source The Accomplice in The Tell-Tale Heart explains that” The verdict of madness, however come less from the story itself than from our commonly held assumptions that all obsessive murders are mad and that their madness is easily recognizable.” This quotes to me means that madness is easy to identify by observing a person behaver or his way of thinking. At last, I do think he may have had an illness that made him want to kill the old man.

This leads Arthur Hobson Quinn to surmise that the intense picture of terror was so graphic because the narrator himself suffered causeless terrors in the night. Quinn further infers that the narrator has a deep sympathy for the old man, even though the narrator is scheming to kill the old man (394).

The narrator is a character whom is very nervous as it seems helped him contribute to his motivation to confess. The narrator in the beginning of the story expresses itself as a”nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous” who wouldn't deal with stuffs that really didn't helped him stayed calm. The narrator's character trait help motivate him to confess by him being nervous and wouldn’t be able to be so calm that what he heard was something that made him confess.