Edgar Allen Poe often has unreliable narrators. In The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator talks about "the thousand injuries" that Fortuanto had done to him, yet he lacks any details. This is alike to what happened in The Tell-Tale Heart, where the narrator decides he wants to murder the old man because of his eye. He talks about how he loves the old man, but the eye drove him mad. Unreliable narrators create an interesting topic to analyze. You are free to look into the mind of the character and everything that happens within the story could be analyzed differently.
I really enjoyed the narrator in The Cask of Amontillado because he was a deeper character. At the end of the murder, when he finishes closing the Fortuanto in the wall, he calls his name, and his "heart grows sick" when there is silence from Montresor's enemy.
Just like these narrators are unreliable, it shows the unreliability of the mind of Poe. The reason his stories create interest is by the suspense and questionability of everything that happens, at least for me. Poe's stories give us a moment to look into the heart and mind of him, which creates a fascination with the oddities and mysteries of the world.
Why do you enjoy (or don't enjoy) reading stories by Poe?
Yeah it's a unique murder story. Our question is not "Why will he kill?" but "How will he carry it out?" It reminds me of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The world has ended before the book even begins, only we never find out exactly how. We are just reading to find out how a surviving father and son will get on with life.
ReplyDelete"Things That They Carried" was kind of written that way as well, writing the end at the beginning, and then coming back to it at the end. I think it's an interesting, and different, approach when it comes to writing.
DeleteI can see what you're talking about with the narrator of the story being "unreliable" about the details for injuries he's received. I haven't read Poe since 11th grade, so I can't really say I have an official opinion about him. I think the dark romanticism he presents is fascinating, though.
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