The Barrel of Amontillado (note: Amontillado is a special type of wine)
This short story is about two men. The narrator of the story wants to punish the other man in the story called Fortunato for saying terrible things about and doing terrible things to him. Actually, Fortunato treats the narrator as a friend - he thinks they are old friends altough he doesn’t know the narrator hates him. The narrator meets Fortunato in a street in the city (there had just been a big party for all the city) where they both live. Fortunato is known as a wine lover and wine expert, so the narrator tries to get Fortunato to a tomb of himself to find out if the wine he bought is really Amontillado.
Fortunato is so keen on the idea of drinking expensive Amontillado that , though he has a cough, he decides to go with the narrator to his tomb where he keeps the wine to stay cold. The narrator is very glad that he managed to get Fortunato to go with him to his family, Montresors tomb. As they go there together nobody sees them – everyone is at the party. The narrator is pleased. On every tomb of Montresors is in Latin written: „Nobody can hurt me without punishment“. The narrator pretends a fear of Fortunato’s illness, the cough. As Fortunato coughs more and more, the narrator asks him if he really wants to go with him. He could ask Luchesi (another wine expert) instead if the wine is really Amontillado. But Fortunato still wants to go on. The narrator offers Fortunato wine – it will help his cough before they got to the place where the Amontillado is hidden. Fortunato drinks some bottles of the wine and laughs. Finally, they arrived at a large, deep cave. At the end of the big cave there was a smaller one. It was about one hundred and twenty centimetres deep, ninety centimetres wide, and two hundred centimetres high. It was very dark. The narrator tells Fortunato that Amontillado is in it and eggs him on to go inside. There are two metal rings in the rock and the narrator ties him to them in a second. Fortunato doesn’t understand what is happening. The narrator builds a wall in front of the smaller cave where is Fortunato now. No matter how Fortunato screams, the narrator continues his punishment. Just when the narrator is placing the last stone to build the whole wall, he hears a terrible low laugh. The voice says: „ Ha! Ha! Ha! – He! He! He! This is a very good joke, an excellent joke. Ha! Ha! Ha! – He! He! He! WE will laugh about it often at your house when we are drinking wine together.“
If I understand this story well, I think the voice was Fortunato’s who was still expecting it was just a joke and couldn’t make it up. But when the narrator says something else, Fortunato doesn’t answer… Here the story ends. The narrator with his sick heart of the low laughing voice leaving the tombs and for fifty years nobody has visited the tombs again.
My own opinion: I loved these stories. The first three ones very scary stories and very great. The two last ones were detective stories and I liked the fact that Poe made them really dramatic (also the scary stories) and with unexpected endings. This is what I like. It’s one of the best books I have ever read (although it contained only 5 short stories). And in addition I prefer reading stories better than novels because they are shorter and you don‘t have to read 600 pages to know one (however long and perhaps interesting) story.
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