The Cask of Amontillado Themes

The contrast between freedom and confinement is extreme in “The Cask of Amontillado.” For one character to be free, another must die. Most of the story takes place in a vast and incredibly foul...

Betrayal drives the action in “The Cask of Amontillado." One character’s betrayal sets off a hideous chain of retribution, enacted below ground in a mass grave. Behind all this revenge and deat...

The only literal drug we see in “The Cask of Amontillado” is wine. But there are many other drugs circulating between the lines. “Drugs,” in this story, can be anything the characters want...

“The Cask of Amontillado” has a frightening fixation on death, corpses, and bones. Edgar Allan Poe’s last short story, written only a few years before his death, is a precise and compact expr...

In “The Cask of Amontillado” foolishness and folly can cost you your life. The story amplifies human foolishness and folly to extremes so hideous and cruel they become vices. ”The Cask” onl...