With this lack of information, evaluating Montresor’s actions become very difficult. The reader doesn’t know why Fortunato was killed, as Montresor never informed the reader of the “injuries” Fortunato inflicted to him. However, commiting a murder for revenge is, and as the reader knows, this is what Montresor’s vengeance was. To feel angry enough, to a point of seeking some sort of retribution, for the pain that was inflicted upon oneself, may not be that uncommon. Montresor sounds deranged and unstable, as he feels the need to make someone hurt, and for them to know why it is happening. It is equally unredressed when the avenge fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong” (Poe 161). A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge… I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. Montresor’s unreliability can be found in the very first paragraph of the short story. Not only did he want to hurt Fortunato, but he wanted Fortunato to know that it was him, Montressor, who was doing the punishing. He begins by explaining that Fortunato inflicted unnamed injuries to him, and that Montresor sought revenge. In Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” the story is recounted by Montresor, meaning it is first person narrative. Works by Poe, such as, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “Black Cat,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” all utilize an unreliable narrator as a technique to enhance itself. Making this choice, without the ability to confirm its integrity, with the help of multiple perspectives. This narrative technique, is also used to oblige the reader to make a choice of either rejecting or accepting the version of the event given to them by the narrator.
The author has the narrator purposefully lacks this credibility, because it can make the story more compelling to the reader, hooking them in. Whether he uses this unreliability through willful deception, mental instability, or drugs, the protagonist can not be dependable to accurately tell the events of the story. “Edgar Allan Poe uses unreliable narrators throughout many of his writings.
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