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Cask Of The Amontillado, By Edgar Allan Poe

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In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Cask of the Amontillado, the main character Fortunato undergoes being buried alive, essentially, in the wine cellar in his own estate. The person responsible for this death is a man named Montresor. The theme in this tale is that of revenge. Montresor, the main antagonist and murderer, claims his vengeance is justified and that while he is committing a crime he is doing so justifiably. Raymond Struckhart of Berlin University, in Germany also concurs my position; by also claiming Montresor is to blame. The argument in this paper is that Montresor is not only delusional to his claims of justification, but also that his crime of killing Fortunato is not justified; and that in fact it is out right murder. Therefore to reiterate the thesis of this paper is, the killing of Fortunato by the hands of Montresor, despite his claims of justification, is just an excuse for murder and not justified by any means. The paper examines the work of Raymond Stuckhart, Elizabeth Dowager, and Barbara Cane as proof to my claims. The paper begins by identifying what “injury” Fortunato enacted upon Montresor and its justifiability. Next the paper examines the correlation between pure revenge and Montresor 's warped sense of morality and justice. With this in mind, one can deduce the guilty nature of Montresor and lack of justification. Keywords: murder, justification, revenge

Justifiable Revenge: An excuse for what is plain murder. In the short story, Cask

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