Similarities Between The Cask Of Amontillado And The Masque Of The Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe the father of the detective genre wrote a multitude of stories with ironic twists and turns the three I have chosen to write about are The Cask of Amontilado,The Tell Tale Heart, and The Masque of The Red Death. Each of these has specific points of irony and other more subtle parts. The Cask of Amontilado is of course about a man who murders another by convincing him he has a rare wine and convincing his victim that they are good friends and he should trust him only to murder him. The Tell Tale Heart is actually a note written by a murder trying to convince the reader that he is quite sane even though he killed and dismembered a man whom he actually liked for nothing more than having a “Vultures eye.” And finally
The Masque of the Red Death a prince who retreats from the world to escape a plague only to have the plague come and visit him in his castle proving you cannot run from death. I also have found two critics who discuss two of the stories Cynthia Bily who talks about The Cask of Amontilado, and Louise Biatch who wrote about The Tell Tale Heart. Edgar Allan Poe did not have a very good home life both his parents were actor but his father abandoned them and his mother died when he was 3 leading to his being taken in but never formally adopted by the Allan family.
The Allan’s were successful merchants who sold tobacco and while Edgar did seem to get along with his new mother he never had a stellar relationship with John Allan. Poe did not seem to want to work in the same line as business as his new family and left when he was able to go to the university of Virginia only to run out of money after his first semester and was unable to continue to attend. For a while he attempted to raise funds by gambling but he wasn’t very good at it so only got himself more in debt finally leaving Virginia in 1827 and joining the Army around the same time as publishing his first book Tamerlane and Other Poems. He wanted to and did attend West Point in 1830 after publishing another book of poems Al Aaraaf, Tamberlane, and Minor Poems in 1829. He did well in his studies but was a poor soldier and was dismissed from the army in the following year after getting into West Point, at this point the Allan’s cut off contact with him and Poe began to write full time one of the first American authors to do so. He moved around for a while in the following years living in New York, Boston, Richmond, and Baltimore. In Baltimore he lived with an aunt and Cousin Poe later married this cousin Virginia who was 13 at the time of the marriage in 1836 Poe was 27. Some say that the relationship was more of an older brother younger sister and the marriage may never had been consummated but she was an inspiration for many of his other poems and stories. Poe returned to Richmond and became a critic for a magazine but his aggressive critiques and apparently being hard to work with lead to him being fired but not before he published the majority of his only novel in the magazine, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. In the late 1830’s and early 1840’s
he seemed to be doing quite well for himself he published a series of works including Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which was his first detective novel, and The Gold Bug, the last of which actually won him a literary award. In 1845 he published his most famous work “The Raven.” In 1847 his wife died and Poe fell into financial trouble and struggled with a drinking problem he left Richmond on September 27 1847 arrived in Baltimore October 7th and died soon after his final words were “Lord, help my poor soul.” The first critic I found was Cynthia Bily who teaches English at Adrian College in Michigan and she discusses Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontilado. Bily concentrates on the nature of the stories two characters Montresor the killer and Fortunato the victim. In her analysis of the story she points out how Montresor way to murder his enemy was unusual for the day because it was not unusual for a man to call another to a duel to the death, instead he takes the more criminal route of plotting a murder a very well thought out one that almost guarantees that it will never lead back to him and at the same time extract the vengeance he seems to seek due to the very excruciating death of either starving or dying of thirst he leaves his foe to. Bily describes Montresor as “cold, calculating, sober in every sense of the word.” That he is two faced and exactly the opposite of the victim Fortunato, who seems to be warm, friendly, and quite found of his wine. She also points out how the story seems to have many opposites woven throughout it from the costumes the two wear for carnival, a doctor and a fool, to the wines Montresor offers his victim, Medoc which is said to have healing properties and De Grave which means of the grave. She also points out how well thought out Montresor’s plot seems to be the lure of the wine, saying he will ask another to taste it for verification, the fact that he acts like they are nothing but two very good friends on their way to share a cup of rare wine together. Bily says later in the story the two characters seem less like opposites and become more like one person such as when Montresor has finally enacts his plan they begin to echo each other. And then when Fortunato is screaming Montresor responds in kind drowning out his victims screams with his own. After this Montresor leaves and 50 years pass before he tells anyone of what he has done. Bily thinks that the style of writing and how the characters are such opposites might resamble how Poe saw himself as a man with a history of drinking problems perhaps he saw a bit of himself in both of the characters in the story two sides of a coin, one when he was drinking, and the other during his sober moments. Bily saw the story as a study of contrasts and she makes many valid points Poe’s next critic