Questionable Trustworthiness: The Cask of Amontillado

When I was on the cheerleading squad during my senior year of high school, I constantly heard stories about other people’s lives. Even though I did not care about the information that was given to me, I questioned the reliability of the news that I was being told. Did this person make up this information? Did the situation really happen? Can I trust these words that I’m being told? Come to find out, fifty percent of the stories were usually gossips and lies. This time in my life can be used as an example towards the importance of questioning the reliability of a storyteller. In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator, Montresor, is not trustworthy because his reliability is questionable.

Montresor is not trustworthy in my opinion because he lives his life living with two different faces. In the beginning of the story, Montresor complements Fortunato (ironically that this man’s name means “fortune”) by reassuring the reader that Fortunato is “respected and even feared”. Montresor also complements Fortunato during a coughing episode while walking into the wine cellar. He tells Fortunato, “Your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was.” Complimenting Fortunato as many times as Montresor has, creates Fortunato to gain trust within Montresor. However, Montresor disguises his true feeling of revenge with a kind of demeanor that lures Fortunato into a deadly trap.

Another event in the story that lead to me to disbelieving Montresor was at the end of the story when Montresor is restacking the piles of bones after burying Fortunato between the walls. He says, “For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed [the bones].” This line is significant in how the Montresor complements himself in the murders he has done for “half a century”. He begins his story by complimenting someone he despises but by the end the story, by compliments himself. No one has realized that Montresor has committed such terrible acts because in the outside world, above the wine cellar, he appears to be a genuine guy. No matter how trustworthy or nice someone may seem, appearances can be conceiving.