Cask Of Amontillado Setting

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a short story about revenge, set in an underground catacomb in Italy. The story is in first person narrative, so the reader does not come to know the name until the end. The narrator begins by explaining that Fortunato has injured him. To make matters worse, he insulted him. The narrator becomes revengeful. So he sets a rendezvous to meet Fortunato, who’s dressed in jester's clothing for a fair and is already extremely drunk. The speaker mentions to Fortunato that he has found a rare barrel of brandy known as Amontillado. Fortunato conveys his eagerness in verifying if the wine is authentic.
So they head towards the underground graveyard otherwise known as the catacomb of the Montresor family. He says that’s where he keeps the wine. The speaker guides Fortunato deeper into
the depths of the catacomb making him become drunker . Fortunato begins coughing, and the narrator advises that Fortunato is much too sick to be down there, and that he should go back. But fortunato just insists on talking about the Amontillado.

Eventually, the narrator leads Fortunato straight into his trap: a human-sized hole, like a grave that’s apart of the wall. The speaker begins bonding Fortunato to the wall, he then begins to close him in on the hole by filling the entrance with bricks. When there is one brick left to fill, he mentally torments Fortunato until he screams out for mercy the narrator’s name: Montresor. Right before Montresor puts the last fatal brick in, Fortunato clatters his bells.
Then Montresor finishes and leaves Fortunato to suffer. At the end, Montresor explains that the whole ordeal occurred fifty years ago, and nobody has found out what he’s done.
The setting has a larger meaning: to suggest freedom or confinement, of the characters. Most of the characters go back and forth between feeling trapped and feeling free. The Gothic Interior is meant for people to be hyper aware of their emotions through careful attention to the setting.
As Montresor and Fortunato venture through the underground graveyard as they move through the spaces become smaller and more putrid. This suggests that, as they head farther away from the fresh air, they are seemingly moving further away from freedom. Fortunato eventually becomes chained up in a man sized crypt that represents the opposite of freedom. He has no fresh air and no means of escape.
Montresor is free and can do whatever he wants. Yet he tells this story. Which shows that even though he is free he feels trapped within the confines of the catacomb, as if he’s still there, trapped with
Fortunato.