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Episode 427 - The Cask of Amontillado (Patreon)

Published:
2018-11-10 00:30:30
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Poevember is back for revenge with Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado!

Special thanks to our reader, the great Bob Hanske!

Here's that Vincent Price / Peter Lorre wine-tasting scene from Tales of Terror.

Next up: The Tell-Tale Heart 

Comments

Anonymous

Yes, my favorite Poe piece! Listening now.

Anonymous

The original draft of "Mary had a Little Lamb" ran as follows actually... Mary had a little lamb Its breath was chill as snow It whispered nameless blasphemies In deadened tones and low It's even more horrifying in the original Dutch.

Anonymous
>>17033817

Oh, a note about the Montressor banner. It's important to note the undertones of the foot and serpent; the foot is crushing the serpent, which has a brutish, oppressive sense to it, while poisoning is a subtle and quiet method of killing that tends to be used by one who has less power than their victim. My point is that the banner itself seems designed around a sort of persecution complex, which rather fits in-line with Montressor's character.

Anonymous

Oh, my favorite adaptation of this tale stars John Heard--of Home Alone and C. H. U. D. fame--as Montressor. You can watch it here: <a href="https://youtu.be/6TF_sMg5pKI" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/6TF_sMg5pKI</a>

Anonymous

I’d read the crap out of Cosmo if there were revenge tales. “How to Please Your Man/Dismember his Body if he Crosses You.” Who wants to start a ladies mag with revenge tales of blood?

Anonymous

Oh how I love Poevember. It's very good.

Anonymous

In regards to weird/horror fiction this was the story that started it all for me. 10th grade English, I was 15 and just remember reading this one, walking away and thinking "Woah."

Anonymous

I had my first bottle of Amontillado this past Christmas. I had recently been convinced to join the executive committee for the combined international Poe/Hawthorne Societies' conferences, held in Japan for the first time this past June, and I spotted the Amontillado in my local liquor store and thought, "Research material!" It was very good. I totally understand why someone would follow a weirdo down into a spooky basement for some.

Anonymous

Hold on now... Alcohol implicated in revenge, stupidity, and death? First I'd heard of it. Which really goes to prove that the genius of Poe is in the writing. And he wrote the shit out of this one.

Anonymous

I always thought that this story (if taken at face value) depicted a man driven mad by a thousand slights and abuses of a socially superior boorish bully sort of guy, the kind oblivious to his own terrible behavior or grotesque qualities. His revenge isn't public and not about honor it's deeper than that. This is a poison vengeance planned obsessively and executed calmly and intently in private and only for them. This sort of person described above, who is maybe impervious to the law or custom through corruption or connections, could foster a particularly motivated (lol) enemy. Given this interpretation, I always read Fortunado's lack of protests to be indictative of a craven shallowness and stupidity, an inability to empathize so profound he can't even concieve of another's motives...and they are forever cut off from him now in a real physical way of the bricked up wall or to me at least read as such. What is so brilliant to me is that there are small clues the narrator is unreliable and wishes to be thought of in a certain way from the start, using language evocative of confessing to a trusted doctor or priest. He's pretty manipulative, always casting himself in the best light and stressing his calm resolve save for a small humanizing part where he's uneasy for minute. So it can also be read as the self aggrandizement of the mad murderous betrayal of a drunken ass of a friend, incomprehensible to Fortunado and accepted as unchangeable due to it being driven by paranoid delusions of a murderous psychopath. In this case when he's talking about his calmness and his precise actions, was it really like that or was he raving like a lunatic about some imagined slight the whole time? Then is Fortunado at last dispairing of even trying to talk to him?

Anonymous

This story has always reminded me of Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo", another quintessential revenge tale. Interestingly, both were published in 1846 (Dumas' story began serialization in 1844). Guess blood revenge and gruesome incarceration were in the zeitgeist back then.

Anonymous

One of my favorite revelations from the story that is often overlooked comes at the second to last sentence: “For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!” He’s telling this story 50 years later. He was not caught. The body and the crime were never discovered. One can assume this is a death bed confession. So he’s just as much saying RIP to himself and his victim.

Anonymous

We read this in school about the time I was reading Poe for my own pleasure. Now, I was bullied a lot growing up, so stories of revenge generally had me munching popcorn in the front rows. This one gave me a cold sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I can still vividly remember. I think it's partly that with or without the cultural insights to give it depth, it seems disproportionate to any sort of insult. it's also difficult to read it without imagining the week to 10 days Fortunado would have spent dying.   I wonder if the image on Montressor's coat of arms is vague on purpose. It speaks to a sort of cycle of violence or revenge. Is the foot crushing a biting serpent, or is the serpent biting a crushing foot? Or, perhaps, it's a never ending cycle.

Anonymous
>>17042207

It occurred to me this time through that this was a deathbed confession...though not a very remorseful one.

Anonymous

It is somehow comforting to know douchebags existed in the 1800's. It was a thing. As far as the "insults" of Fortunado; if I know my Poe, it was likely about a woman. If alcohol and douchebaggery are involved, maybe a woman was "dishonored". That kind of thing made Poe's blood boil. And his mother, Eliza, was often the target of hurtful rumors and speculation.

Anonymous

This story was taught to me as an example of a possibly unreliable narrator, like what appears in some of Poe's other stories. I still think that's an intriguing and haunting way to interpret it, as it is creepy to imagine someone secretly hating someone for no good reason and then planning something horrible while thinking themselves rational the whole time - something that no doubt happens often enough in real life. But the way the victim doesn't seem too shocked by what is happening does seem to suggest something else may be going on, even as the mystery of it all helps the story linger in the imagination. Something about the grim determination of the killer even as his victim pleads feels disturbingly real.

Anonymous

"A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong." Damn, that is so cold but so well put.

Anonymous

The toast to long life could be ‘I hope you’re alive behind that wall for a long time, contemplating my revenge’

Steve

Sherry is from Jerez and Amontillado is from Montilla, so they are different wines. Sherry is just what we call this kind of Spanish fortified wine. I don't like much wine, except for pudding wine (the really sweet white, sherry is usually a really sweet red), but I've tasted enough to be able to tell an oaky Chardonnay from a floral-lichee (frankly yucky) Gewurstramminer, or a Riesling (Crisp, bit sweeter, not too offensive to me).

Robert Daniel Pickard

I agree that snobbery in any domain is a bad thing. However, I think you're wrong about people's ability to identify a wine's vintage. My ex and her friends would every week try to stump each other with a bottle from their own collection. They could name the vineyard and year or at least the type grape(s) and where it was grown. It was pretty cool thing to see.

Anonymous

The true horror and inhuman cruelty, the exquisite appropriateness of this revenge seems to have been overlooked: Fortunado, the garrulous carouser, will die in lonely silence, true; the glutton will perish for want of food and wine, yes; but worse, much worse, he will awaken in darkness on the first full day of his slow execution with an absolute bastard of a hangover.

Anonymous

To Chad's point, I went on a wine tour about a year ago and one of the wineries had Winemaker's notes available. I snagged one because seriously read this: "Its garnet color portends the dichotomy of youth and the complexity of age while an alluring nose teases the senses with with intriguing spices, bramble berries and dark fruit compote. A lively circle of black raspberry, boysenberry, date and plum promenade around the palate on fine tannins accompanied by coriander, cardamom, white pepper, vanilla bean, dried rose petals, a pinch of tobacco, rich-wet garden bed soil and soft leather." RICH-WET GARDEN BED SOIL?! So your wine tastes like spicy dirt? Got it.

Anonymous

Am I the only dumbass who thought that "Amontillado" was the main character's name as a kid? You know, Mr. Bob Amontillado owned a cask, and lured some other guy into a dungeon to see it? Yes? No? I'm betting I probably am. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the Embarrassing Admission of Ben.

Anonymous

I took a Horror Lit class where we covered this story, along with a handful of Poe's, and as to M's motives the prof asked us to consider him as the tv character Frasier. In part due to the wine snobbery, but more for the "insult" that M can't let slide and has obsessed over enough to plot an elaborate revenge. We got a good laugh out of casting the character in this way and I haven't been able to think of this story since without it.

Anonymous
>>17129783

...Fortunato NEEDS to be played by David Hyde Pierce. Especially if he hams it up as much as he did in The Perfect Host.

Anonymous

What sommelier hurt you, Chad?

Anonymous

Your long aside on wine tasting reminded me of a great documentary I saw, funnily enough I caught it on a plane journey back from my trip to Boston, Providence and Salem, MA. It's called Sour Grapes and follows the story of Rudi Kurniawan who rose to prominence as an extravagent wine collector and taster who threw wine tasting parties and was partly responsible for a huge boom in wine collecting and escalation to wild levels of the money being spent on rare and vintage wines. Well, it turns out he was a fraud. I believe it was the only recorded case of wine fraud. He was allegedly crafting wines by blending cheap wines together to imitate the taste - or so the defrauded claimed - and was caught with hundreds of fake wine labels he used to recreate these rare antique bottles of wine. Fascinating subject adn well worth a watch.

Anonymous

I like to think that this story is about a complete overreaction by the ultimate wine snob, Montresor, and the obnoxious, wine-swilling Fortunato. For years, Montresor has been pulling high-priced, "special" bottles from his private reserve to get the admiration of his friends for Montressor's extreme wealth, high intelligence, and critical taste. Every time, Fortunato (a man of some standing in the same social circles) has been guzzling Montresor's wine, clearly not caring anything about the qualities of wine or price, and wrecking everything. Each time, Montressor adds this slight to the list until Montressor clearly cannot take it anymore and plans his revenge... I might have wine snob friends like this now that I think about it...

Anonymous

Just a quick thought ... since Fortunato mentions Mrs Fortunato, could she be a clue as to the injuries and insult? Perhaps Fortunato married a female relative of Montresor and has not been an honorable spouse? ACD's 'New Catacomb' had a similar revenge motivation.

feedergoldfish

It's really neat that your reader, Bob Hanske, was your high school teacher and read it aloud to you in school! Plus, he's a terrific reader. The fact that the story was published in Godey's Lady's Book reminds me of Jack London's stories, many of which were published in Cosmopolitan. I work in an academic library with a large Jack London collection and students are always surprised to hear it. "Wait... Cosmo?" Of course, it was a different magazine back then and it published a range of fiction by authors like Ambrose Bierce and HG Wells.

Anonymous
>>17033996

Sanjay, you'll be pleased to know your little poem was apparently the basis of a full-blown nightmare where I had to read the poem on a never-ending parchment beginning with this stanza, a cthulhulized sheep drawing on the paper leering at me in flicking candlelight as a silent hill type pyramid head mary came clomping towards me. Thanks! It was great!

Anonymous

If you guys do The Black Cat, I have an interesting story to share. Wait. Maybe you already did it. I have been listening so long that I find myself thinking, "Didn't they already do this story?" occasionally. I assume you fellas keep a database though.

Ilker Yucel

This is perhaps my favorite Poe story. I remember reading it out loud in my English class, and my teacher remarked at my correct Latin pronunciation at the end.

Anonymous

Did anyone mention the tale, “Usher II” from Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles?”