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Compare And Contrast Tell Tale Heart And The Cask Of Amontillado

Decent Essays

What would one expect when a man gets killed for having an odd body part, or even for saying a mildly rude comment? For many students, reading and understanding dark short stories is very troublesome, and with such a large influence of this theme, the need to show different aspects is substantial. The author of the short stories, “Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” is Edgar Allen Poe, an author of mystery and macabre short stories. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” and the “Cask of Amontillado”, both protagonists end up killing their victim due to small and petty things, such as an eye, or a measly offensive comment. In this analysis, I will show Edgar Allen Poe shows his unique sense of style through irony, foreshadowing, and allusion; to entertain the reader.
Edgar Allen Poe’s use of irony brings out the reader’s dark humor and entertains the reader. Poe uses verbal irony to add humor and portray shock. It is used when Montresor sees Fortunato in the carnival and declares, “My dear Fortunato, you luckily met,” (Poe ). This is sentence is an example of verbal irony because Fortunato’s intentions are to murder Montresor, not meet him. Another example of irony that is used by Poe is the Cask of Amontillado is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is used in the story, by the way, Fortuanto is dressed for the carnival. Fortunato is dressed like a jester, even though Montresor was the one who was ridiculed and mocked like a jester. In fact a Professor from Medford, Oregon, Professor Charles N. Nevi, from the department of English states, “Fortunato's dress is ironic, for a jester is not just a man to be laughed at; he is a man who makes others laugh by being aware of the frailties of mankind and then ridiculing them, but Fortunato is aware of very little and who ridicules nothing. It is Montresor who came close to the role of jester.” Another example of dramatic irony in the short story, “Tell-Tale Heart,” is when the narrator says, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” The narrator seems to be trying to convince himself that he is not mad when he actually is. These three uses of irony used in the Cask of Amontillado and Tell-Tale Heart brings out

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