Story analysis
„Philologica Jassyensia”, an XIII, nr. 2 (26), 2017, p. 203–209
The Art of Dissimulation.
The Good Christian vs. the Loyal Freemason
Codrin Liviu CUŢITARU
Keywords: Poe; narrator; tale; crime story; revenge; religion; Christianity;
Freemasonry; dissimulation; unreliability
Edgar Allan Poe, the leading American romantic, became famous – post
mortem, if we may add – primarily for his “tales of the grotesque and arabesque”,
which, as we know, abound in monstrous assassinations. One in particular – quite
remarkable for its brevity –, The Cask of Amontillado, illustrates something more
than a gruesome murder. It attempts to minutely establish the steps of a perfect
crime. Let us follow closely the phases of the diabolical plan and try to understand
what exactly generates the already mentioned “perfection”! The story is set in
traditional Italy, at the time of the Venetian Carnival. We should clarify, at this very
early stage, the spiritual significance of the “Carnival” (a specific Catholic feast),
since it will turn out to be immensely useful later on. Thus, originally, “carnival”
means “meat removal” (carnelevamen in Latin, carnevale in Italian) and is
celebrated just before the beginning of Lent. The less spectacular Romanian
equivalent of this religious event is the so-called lăsata secului, i.e. the cessation of
meat consumption.
The action of Poe’s tale develops during this great symbolic masquerade of
Venice and it happens so because of the indicated “perfect crime”. The narrator and,
simultaneously, the assassin of the story, Montresor, a local nobleman (according to
the few details we get about him), tells us that he has borne “the thousand injuries of
Fortunado” the best he could, but when his supposed rival (the nature of the
relationship between the two remains rather obscure throughout the text) moves to
“insult”, he vows “revenge”. We should not bother right now with the ambiguity of
the terms used by Montresor in his opening exposé, i.e. injury and insult. We shall
do it later. For the time being, let us focus on the immediate aspects of his short
confession! These aspects are: the necessary revenge he must take against Fortunado
and the Carnival as the setting chosen for his violent action. One should not expect
the enigmatic aristocrat to be extremely communicative here. He appears as a
restrained talker. Yet, even so, what he has to say freezes the listener’s blood.
Montresor has sent all his servants to the Carnival, in order that no unwanted
eye-witness should pop out at the house. The family castle (palazzo) is at his
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania.
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disposal. All evening, he has followed the unfortunate Fortunado, waiting for the
appropriate moment to start his plot. The future victim is dressed up (“disguised”),
quite suggestively, in the Fool’s costume and entertains himself at the feast, having
no idea about what awaits him at the end of the night. Suddenly appearing in his
way, as it were, Montresor greets Fortunado, informing him that he is in a hurry to
find Luchesi, an important local expert in wines, we understand. He intends to ask
him to come to the castle and taste a wine which “passes for Amontillado”, but
about which Montresor has some “doubts”. Only Luchesi, due to his singular skills,
will be able to dispel the uncertainty. At once, the narrator has struck at the core of
his victim’s main weakness: his vanity. Fortunado is a wine expert himself and
claims to better than Luchesi. He can certify the Amontillado, albeit he has drunk a
lot already.
Consequently, Fortunado convinces Montresor that he will gladly undertake
the wine-tasting task and accompany him to his vaults. The satisfied executioner
thus walks by his ignorant victim to the catacombs of the palazzo, where,
supposedly, a cask of controversial Amontillado wine is to be revealed. These
catacombs – used as vaults – are uncanny from the outset. Although intoxicated,
Fortunado notices the oddity of the place, being particularly intrigued by the dark
“extensions” of the walls and the human relics they come across in their unusual
descent. At the victim’s legitimate questions about these curious elements, the
narrator answers somewhat symbolically: “The Montresors were a great and
numerous family!” He seems to imply that the vaults are, in fact, the sepulcher of
several generations of people. Calmed down by the observation, Fortunado requires
information about the code of arms of the Montresors and their motto in history.
Both are distinct signs of a long, cherished, noble and significant family tradition.
The former, Montresor replies, displays a foot crushing the head of a serpent
“whose fangs are imbedded in the heel”, whereas the latter is a Latin citation,
sounding a bit strangely: “Nemo me impune lacessit!” (“No one insults me with
impunity!”). Equally the arms and the motto revive Biblical metaphors from The
Old Testament: the foot crushing the serpent represents an image from The Book of
Genesis, alluding to the eternal triumph of good in its confrontation with evil, and
the idea of retaliation in distribution from the motto constitutes an almost explicit
reference to lex talionis. Not at all disturbed by these explanations, Fortunado wants
“to proceed to the Amontillado”. Therefore, deriding his victim’s insensitivity,
Montresor even plays a little game. Specifying that the place is too damp (the
catacombs are under a river), the narrator asks Fortunado to go back home, lest he
should get ill (the victim coughs persistently during their descent into the vaults).
“You are rich, respected, admired, beloved, you are happy as once I was”,
Montresor says.
The proud Fortunado does not even think about it nevertheless. He intends to
taste the Amontillado at all possible costs. In the meantime, “the rich and respected”
nobleman drinks whatever comes in handy, like, for instance, a bottle of De Grâve,
randomly discovered along the way, which he empties at a breath. After having
finished the wine, he throws the bottle upward with a bizarre gesticulation that
Montresor does not appear to understand. “You do not comprehend?” Fortunado
interrogates Montresor. “Not I”, he answers. “Then you are not of the brotherhood”,
The Art of Dissimulation. The Good Christian vs. the Loyal Freemason
205
Fortunado continues. “You are not of the masons”. At the unexpected conclusion of
the victim, Montresor suddenly and firmly intervenes to confirm: “Yes, yes, yes,
yes!” “You?”, Fortunado shows his amazement, “Impossible! A mason?” “A
mason”, our narrator argues, “producing a trowel”, as a sign, from beneath the folds
of his roquelaire. Undoubtedly, we must admit that the dialogue between the victim
and the executioner has changed in a rather unpredictable manner, so to say.
Therefore, we need to interrupt the descriptive momentum of the critical
endeavor, at this point, with a brief analytical intermezzo. A huge confusion
determines the completely weird dialogue related above. The two men talk about
Masonry in the terms of an incredible semantic incongruence. While Fortunado
refers, obviously, to the speculative sense of the concept – Masonry as a secret
organization, based on occult and ritualistic practices –, Montresor, in his
“understanding” of the context, does not abandon the concrete area of significance,
i.e. the operative meaning of the notion – Masonry as a traditional profession (craft)
of humanity. The narrator claims he has “masonic” training (which implies he would
have specific abilities in the field of “constructions”), revealing (as “a sign”) a
trowel he has on him (accidentally?) at the time of his encounter with Fortunado.
Attentive readers are bound to note here an arrogant form of implicit sarcasm. The
executioner shows his victim, with utter cynicism, his sinister murder weapon: the
mysterious trowel itself.
Completely disconcerted, Fortunado does not make any sense out of
Montresor’s remark, confirming, once more, his position of a “Fool” in the story.
“You jest”, he concludes, resuming his search for the wine of Amontillado. At the
end of their odd conversation, the murderer himself whispers three words, barely
understandable and apparently meaningless in the general context. Fortunado no
longer seems to hear them however. We are not going to insist on or even mention
them at this moment. A bit of mystery will not do any harm to our analysis! The
enigmatic dynamics is, after all, in the spirit of Poe’s tale. So, our heroes reach the
most remote spot of the catacombs, where, within a wall, Montresor says, the cask
was carefully placed. Fortunado inserts his right hand inside, whereas Montresor
fetters his left arm with a chain (prepared in advance) which comes out of the granite.
Suddenly, the intoxicated Fool becomes captive in one of the extensions of the
vaults. He looks like a crucified person. Montresor walls him up alive, using his trowel.
The scene of the execution is cryptic, obscure, like the setting itself. The
victim does not react at all, seemingly accepting the bizarre immolation-like ritual.
Intoxication may have something to do with this lack of reaction or, perhaps, the
wine expert has finally understood the fact he was ridiculed by Montresor and,
consequently feels defeated. No one knows for sure. The only sentence (can it be an
invocation, a prayer, a solicitation of compassion?) Fortunado speaks out (although,
as we shall see, these may not be his words!) is the following one: “For the love of
God, Montresor!” To which, driving us to total ambiguity, Montresor calmly
responds (in an echo-like manner): “Yes, for the love of God!” We are going to try
to figure out later whatever is concealed behind the unusual exchange of
“metaphors” between the two. Right now, let us notice that the narrator gives us, in
the end of his confession, an unexpected “chronology” of events. He says that, for
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fifty years, no human has disturbed the “Fool” from his “sleep”! He then committed
the perfect crime.
In other words, nobody would have known anything about it, unless the
criminal himself had decided to come out. The conclusion of the narrative will
therefore be a late prayer for the soul of the victim, departed in such horrendous
circumstances: In pace requiescat! (“May he rest in peace!”). Again, we have the
feeling Montresor utters these Latin “lexemes”. Yet, a more experienced reader of
Poe would probably be tempted to ask: is it really so? Before clarifying all the less
difficult ambiguities of the text, we must focus on the most challenging of them all,
i.e. the murder itself. It may have been a perfect crime, no argument about that, but
what was its motivation? Why does Montresor hate Fortunado so much? What do
those “injuries” and that uncanny “insult” from the beginning actually mean? A
glitter of hope appears when Montresor mentions that Fortunado is “rich, respected,
admired, beloved and happy” as once he was. Could then a social rivalry between
these aristocrats be the reason for “revenge”? Was there any competition in Venice
in the past?
Possibly, but, let us face it, that constitutes a rather inconsistent detail of the
narrative. Something else draws our attention in a more convincing way. It is the
already mentioned “confession-like” style of Montresor’s narrative. He has been
addressing someone from the very beginning. This is how he starts: “You, who so
well know the nature of my soul…” Who might be the silent listener? From the
symbolic invocation made by the narrator, we could presume that the listener is God
himself. Only He can know so well the nature of a sinner’s soul. Nevertheless, we
should adopt a more pragmatic view on things here and say that the listener is not
necessarily God, but maybe his spiritual substitute, the priest. Considering that the
tale indicates a gap of half a century between facts and their presentation (between
the time of action and the time of story, as it were), we may infer that the old
Montresor (the story teller as opposed to the action taker, i.e. the young Montresor)
lays on his deathbed and has his last confession in front of his confessor.
If this is true – and let me say that it must be, since the clues of such a
scenario are too evident! –, we have to accept the undoubted existence of a third
character in the tale (beside Luchesi who remains just a strategic move of Montresor
and not a real hero!). The character in question only appears to be silent, because, in
reality, he talks and he does it quite visibly in the end. We are referring to the priest
who listens to the narrator’s terrifying account. He is the one (and not Fortunado!)
who exclaims For the love of God, Montresor!, upon realizing that the dying man in
front of him admits to a murder. Likewise, he is the one who prays for poor
Fortunado’s soul (In pace requiescat!), upon comprehending that the “Fool” was
killed fifty years ago and no one ever knew anything about him during this time.
Thus, Montresor’s confession about the perfect crime starts making sense: an old
murderer, ironically, in intention a good and simple Christian, wants to make peace
with God before his death and therefore exposes a terrible sin to his confessor.
A dilemma however still lingers at the back of our minds. What pushed this
good Catholic to the committing of perhaps the most disturbing sin in Christianity, a
brother’s assassination? In order to answer, we must return to earlier details of
Montresor’s confession. Let us note again the religious devotion of his aristocratic
The Art of Dissimulation. The Good Christian vs. the Loyal Freemason
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family! As said already, both the arms and motto of the Montresors are subtle
Biblical references (even the slogan Nemo me impune lacessit!/No one insults me
with impunity! has a religious connotation, in The Old Testament or lex talionis kind
of way, i.e. “no one insults my faith without being punished for his insolence!”).
Fortunado, on the contrary, is a different type of Italian nobleman. An overt
Freemason, he appears to lead a non-Christian life, at least from Montresor’s
dogmatic perspective. According to the narrator’s pious traditional angle, his victim
may very well be “a pagan”, whose presence in the civilized order of Christian Europe
troubles profoundly. Montresor’s very identity is menaced by Fortunado’s values.
We should properly understand Montresor. He is prepared to commit and
finally commits murder, paradoxically, out of his intense religious convictions. At
the priest’s remark For the love of God, Montresor!, his response is Yes, for the love
of God! In other words, he killed, no matter how horrendous this may look to the
modern man, in the name of God, as any good Catholic would or should have done
it, under the same circumstances. In the light of this hypothesis – that of the
traditional Christian who “punishes” a mason/a pagan for “spiritual aggression” –,
the enigmatic words the narrator uses at the beginning of his confession get new
significances. The “injuries” Montresor has borne the best he could are “personal
insults” (brought presumably by Fortunado to his friend), insults which good Christians
must accept (“Turn the other cheek!”). Yet, when the mason moves to “insult” (a
term that should be read here as “blasphemy”, i.e. a symbolic attack on Montresor’s
faith and God!), there is no turning back: the good Christian “vows revenge”.
The conflict between the two men – far from being social (a competition
within the aristocratic hierarchy) or psychological (envy determined by the same
unstable social status) – is rather religious, facing an “offending” mason and an
“offended” Catholic. It is only natural therefore that they should talk, persistently,
about “the love of God”. “God” represents the essence of the antagonism, but “God”
seen from two perspectives allegedly opposed: Christian-spiritual and Occult-ritualistic.
Montresor acts, symbolically, before the Lent, at the time of the Carnival, when the
church-going individual “purges” his everyday life, eliminating all its temptation-
bringing components, all its factors of corruption, vice and moral decay. Fortunado
the Fool is one such factor of “decay”, a spiritual “toxin” of society, a “toxin” that
has to be eradicated. Montresor the Catholic undertakes this unpleasant task. Not in
his own name (he has always borne the mason’s personal “injuries” the best he could),
but in the name of God (when he realizes Fortunado constitutes a “blasphemer”).
So, we should ask ourselves if, adopting the above described hermeneutic
scenario, one automatically drives away the mystery of Montresor’s confession-like
story. No way would be the immediate answer! Let us not forget we are dealing with
the master of the narrative enigmas here, i.e. Poe! We mentioned the fact that, at the
end of the two characters’ “conversation” about Freemasonry, Montresor utters
some uncanny words which have been deliberately left in suspension. We should
return to them now. If you remember, realizing that Montresor does not know what
he speaks about when referring to his belonging to “the brotherhood”, Fortunado
leaves in contempt, saying: “You jest!” He considers the poor man in front of him,
with a trowel in his hand (as a “sign” of his masonic identity), simply an idiot. Yet,
“the idiot” whispers something in the aftermath, which, if heard by Fortunado,
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would have certainly stopped him in dismay: “Be it so!” Taken as such, the words
do not say much, but, associated with a historical “case” from 1826, they give you
the creeps.
The “case” is that of Captain William Morgan from New York, a distinguished
American Freemason. Edgar Allan Poe was surely familiar with this episode from
the history of the United States. In 1826, Morgan published a book with a huge
impact on the Americans of the time: Illustrations of Freemasonry by One of the
Fraternity. There he discloses secrets of the masonic rituals (cf. Sorensen 1972),
insisting on the significances of different types of initiations and the meanings of
certain occult gesticulations. The author describes a situation that is similar to what
Montresor and Fortunado experience in the catacombs. More precisely, Captain
Morgan claims that a Freemason who wants to test the masonic identity of a fellow-
partner may inquire him about his “belonging” to the brotherhood by raising the
hands, symbolically, above his head. That is exactly what the “Fool” does after
emptying the bottle of De Grâve! He raises his hands in the air with a gesticulation
Montresor pretends he has not understood.
Confused, Fortunado asks: “You do not comprehend?” “Not I”, Montresor
replies. The “Fool” then legitimately concludes: “You are not of the brotherhood.”
Montresor is appalled and stupidly produces his trowel “from beneath the folds of
his roquelaire”! The genuine Freemason rightfully gets annoyed. He says: “You
jest! Let us proceed to the Amontillado!” And he continues his walk into the vaults.
Well, at this point, we have an absolutely sensational element, often overlooked by
the critics and the readers of this tale. According to William Morgan, when
confronted with this weird gesticulation of the hands, the true Mason must confirm
his belonging to the fraternity by simply saying a Biblical formula: “So mote it be!”
For the love of God, to paraphrase the narrator himself, what does Montresor
whisper at the end of the scene? “Be it so!” (the equivalent of “So mote it be!”).
Probably, he even smiles cynically, when uttering these words, at the intellectual
simplicity of the “Fool”. The truth is thus eventually revealed: the conflict is not
religious, but occult.
Undoubtedly, Montresor is a high-rank Freemason who has the mission to
eliminate Fortunado the Fool! He acts in disguise, though, in order to deceive both
his confessor (the priest, the listener) and the audience (the reader, the receiver).
Why should he do this or, even more importantly, why should Fortunado be
eliminated? Let us briefly return to William Morgan’s story so as to properly answer
the question! Immediately after the publication of his disturbing book of masonic
disclosures, the military man vanished into thin air. After one year, what was
suspected to be his remains “appeared” suddenly inside a cave (very damp, by the
way). The position of the skeleton suggested the idea of crucifixion. People
(including the press) were convinced at the time Morgan had been executed
symbolically by the brother masons for his betrayal (let us specify that Montresor,
too, sees his “revenge” as an act of “immolation”). Like the captain in discussion,
Fortunado breaks the most important law of Freemasonry – the law of silence. He is
talkative, superficial and stupid.
For no reason whatsoever, he discloses his belonging to the brotherhood to
someone who apparently does not have any connection with the organization (i.e.
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Montresor). His executioner thus becomes the “hand” of the secret society, which
must punish a “Fool” like Fortunado in an exemplary way! Fortunado is William
Morgan. So, we may easily conclude that Poe’s tale, far from being about a “social
antagonism” or a “religious one”, constitutes, in fact, a parable about “secret plots”
or, more exactly, about “conspiracies”. What we have in Montresor’s confession is
the perfect dissimulation, “a play of substitutions” from what will be, in the 20 th
century, the tradition of “the deconstructionist game”. His false “identities” (a social
competitor and then a good Christian) disseminate, toward the end of the exposé,
into a real “one” (that of a vengeful Freemason). This text deals with the secret
selves of a narrator, confronting us with, probably, one of the best examples of epic
unreliability in the world history of literature. Poe illustrates himself, once more, as
the master of this genre.
Bibliography
Morgan 1826: Wiliam Morgan, Illustrations of Freemasonry by One of the Fraternity, New
York, Batavia.
Poe 1964: Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of the Amontillado, in Great Tales of Horror, selected
and with an introduction by David Sohn, New York, Bantam Books.
Sorensen 1972: Peter J. Sorensen, William Morgan, Free-Masonry and “The Cask of
Amontillado”, in “Poe Studies”, 5 (1972).
Abstract
This article focuses on one of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous tales, The Cask of
Amontillado, a story of “perfect crime”, as it is usually considered. The action is set in
medieval Italy, at the time of the Carnival, in Venice. The protagonists are two noblemen,
Montresor and Fortunado. Montresor is the narrator of the text and wants to revenge on
Fortunado, because of a mysterious “insult”. Fortunado’s “mistake” is never made clear,
although the punishment for the trespassing as such is extreme (Fortunado will eventually
pay with his own life). The article tries to explain the enigma behind the “insult”. This takes
us into an occult world, where the identities of the characters change dramatically (they are,
successively, social competitors, religious enemies and rival Masons). Poe’s symbolism and
epic games become here remarkable tools of constructing and amplifying the mystery. The
Cask of Amontillado should therefore be viewed as a masterpiece of the American
Romanticism and of “horror genre” as well.
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