Amontillado!

     Today in class, we read an interesting and completely creepy story by Edgar Allen Poe, in which a man kills a former friend for doing him a "thousand injuries". We speculated as to why the narrator wanted so badly to kill Fortunato. Is it possible that the narrator wanted to kill Fortunato for religious reasons?

The first clue I found as to why this might be true is the organization that Fortunato was a part of. Fortunato mentions a secret club of "masons" that the narrator does not understand. He is referring to a secret society of intellectuals, who, as was mentioned in class, were hated by the church. Maybe the narrator is a member of the church who dislikes the Freemason's beliefs about god and is so angered that the only revenge he sees fit is to kill Fortunato.

Another sign might be that in the ending paragraph when the narrator is leaving Fortunato, Fortunato screams, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR," and the narrator screams back, "Yes, for the love of God!". In the first quote, Fortunato was probably just making an exclamation because he was so exasperated at being shut off behind a wall. By screaming back a confirmation, however, Montresor's words connote a different meaning. He is obviously not in a compromising position and has not need for frantic cries for help, so maybe Montresor's reference to god is a legitimate one, meaning that he was killing Fortunato "for the love of god".

Finally, the very last sentence of the story, Montresor says, "For half of [a] century no mortal has disturbed [the bones]." It seems in the story that Montresor HAS disturbed these same bones, saying that he had dealt with them earlier. The specific use of the word "mortal" also connotes that if not a mortal, a different being has touched them. Maybe Montresor thinks himself an immortal being, sent by god?