Your Daily Poe (Or Edgar Allan If You're Nasty)

As it's officially October (BOO!), I will on every day be reading one short story written by the Master of the Macabre himself, and briefly commenting on it. Enjoy!

Day 17, Part 2: The Cask of Amontillado

Thoughts: I remember reading this high school and learning it was perhaps the greatest example in all of literature of a crime - or deserved retribution, in the narrator's eyes - in which the victim has no idea they are being punished or why, as opposed to, say, The Scarlet Letter, for which the entire purpose was to make sure the victim knew they'd done wrong and were being punished for all to see. Despite the story's succinctness, Poe does a great job of taking the time, over and over again, to play the "oh please, let me take you back" line with Fortunato, both building up a little suspense while cleverly seeming to assuage himself of any guilty intention of wrongdoing, until it's of course too late. On a side note, this is a rare Poe story (so far) with almost an entire page's worth of dialogue, which was interesting got see (albeit not to read, as most of it was a drunken Fortunato repeating himself.)

Memorable Line: "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."

Score from 1-10: 8