Death by means of revenge

Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The cask of Amontillado” and “The Mask of the Red Death” stories. He used the main characters to battle with suffering and eventually death and this is how the two stories bring out the mortality theme which comes in because of revenge. The two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, “the Mask of the Red Death” and “The Cask of Amontillado” reveal about death which is caused by revenge. It is true that out of revenge, people can kill others or people can die to pay for their mistakes. According to Poe, the two Poe’s stories show similarities of revenge against those people who consider themselves to be very proud because of their own good (2009) and I quote, “people who consider themselves as proud and humiliate others, revenge can work best for them”.

The stories, “The cask of Amontillado” and “The Mask of the Red death” by Edgar Allan Poe are similar in several ways and have a theme which is common for both of them. The two stories belong to the gothic genre’s literacy and the characters used in the two stories are similar. Edgar Allan Poe was a very great writer as he tried to integrate many aspects like humor, irony, alcohol and drugs, aristocracy and use of few characters to bring out the theme of death. Fortunado as a character found in “The cask of Amontillado” was an aristocrat and was also very wealthy though he was very much involved in too much drinking of alcohol. He was killed by Montresor and the reason was because of insults.

Similarly, in “The Cask of Amontillado”, an aristocrat who was loved by people and was also rich also indulged in too much drinking of alcohol and Montresor ended up brutally killing him. This act confirmed that the hatred of Poe for aristocracy and those who were overindulging and thus, this marked a similarity between both stories because aristocracy and overindulging is common for both stories. Montresor took revenge on Fortunado and killed him hence revenge as a means of death (Bryant, 2017). Also in “The mask of the Red Death” where Prince Prospero and his friends who were seeking safety by locking themselves in the palace to ensure pleasure at the expense of others also finally die unexpectedly. This is also a kind of death by revenge.

They were both enjoying festivities like carnival (“the cask of Amontillado”). Again, their names were ironic in that they suffered from deaths of gruesome as the story comes to an end and the irony is evident in their names (Fernández & González-Rivas, 2017). They are both Fortunado and Prospero but from the story no one is neither fortunate nor prosperous as their names suggest as they all died. This is one of the features that Poe used in both of the stories to illustrate his main theme of mortality. “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Mask of the red death” have similar theme of mortality and they have characters with similar traits. Springer Science & Business Media, 2009. Zilboorg, Gregory. "Fear of death.