The Cask of Amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado
The Cask of Amontanillo was particular hard for me to understand. Even though I reread it a couple of times, Poe’s writing got confusing to me. Narration and Point of View starting on page 161, helped me understand that the narrator was very aware of the voice in the story, but still, at the end of the reading, I was not as clear about the story. However, as far as I understood, Montresor holds a high social position but not as a nice positive one. I don’t believe Montresor was an unreliable narrator, especially the way he supposedly tricks what appears to be his enemy Fortunato. In addition, I did not quite get how he built the different walls as they were walking through damp vaults which are covered with nitre where Montresor kept his wine. In addition, I did not quite get how he had the wine in these damp vaults and why there were full of dead bodies, apparently Montresor’s family. Why were there bones all over the place? Shouldn’t the bodies be buried?
Montresor is telling the story as a first person. The “You” at the beginning of the story does not mean make it any different. After reading the story, I believe he is using the Objective Narrator model, where he could only tells us what can be seen or heard and did not know explain Fortunato’s feelings as they walked the wet damp vaults. I practically thought that Montresor had no remorse about what he was about to do since he kept pretty calmed throughout the story. He showed not thoughts or feelings. In addition, the bones lying on the floors as they walked through the vaults showed that perhaps those were not bones that belonged to his family. They could be bones of other people he did not like and took them there to kill them and not bury them. I thought Fortunato was going to die doe to his caught, it was never clear that he was going to be buried between layers of bricks and stones.

Narration and Point of View Regarding the Narration and Point of View, I learned that the narrator of a story is aware of the “Voice” as he or she tells the story. In addition, as the narrator tells the story in which the events happen, the visual angle is called the “Focus”. Both Voice and Focus are considered the “Point of View”. In addition to Focus and Voice, there is the “Style” and “Tone” of the narrator’s voice from rumbling the character’s feelings to mocking their exaggerated speech or thoughts. Also, I learned the difference between the three types of third person narrators;
Omniscient, Limited and Objective:
1. Omniscient is a narrator who knows should know everything that he or she needs to know about the characters and events in the story and explains the character's thoughts, feelings, and motives and never says “maybe” or “perhaps”, he or she should always know the feelings.
2. A Limited narrator is someone who is restricted to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. The narrator is not so sure of what every character in the story may be feeling.
3. An Objective narrator can only tell the reader what he or she may want you to see or hear. The narrator does not know anyone’s thoughts or feelings in the story. As explained in the reading and PowerPoint presentation, “We are all objective observers”. We can only tell others what we see or hear and for the most part, we can only guess someone’s thoughts, but we are not able to know what they may be thinking unless they tell us.