The Cask Of Amontillado Mood Analysis

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Poe and Hurst in their short stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Scarlet Ibis” both do a fantastic job of creating a disturbing mood. “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story about two friends, one of which brutally murders the other. “Scarlet Ibis” written by James Hurst, is a story that starts out with a child that is born with serious health problems, one is his heart, but preserves through the beginning of adolescents, but is than pushed too hard to become more like a normal boy and ends up dying because of it. Both Poe and Hurst use three literary devices, foreshadowing, irony, and figurative language to create a disturbing mood. Poe and Hurst both use foreshadowing of the antagonist character’s death. In …show more content…
Examples of irony are dispersed all along the plot line of Poe’s story but one prominent example is found at the end of the story when Montresor is putting the last stone into position, the way he saw it is, “I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up”(10 Poe). This scenario is very ironic because Montresor and Fortunato act like friends, but then Montresor buries his friend, and a friend does not kill another friend. In correlation also causes there to be a disturbing mood because of the disturbing death. Just like "The Cask of Amontillado", "Scarlet Ibis" has a brilliant example of irony in the later part of the plot. This part of the plot is when the narrator realizes that Doodle is not right behind him and he goes back to look for him. He finds Doodle on the ground not moving, “ so I placed my hands on his forehead and lifted his head. Limply, he fell backward onto the earth. He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained a brilliant red…” (Hurst 493). Hurst’s example is ironic because the whole story the narrator is trying to make his brother more normal and helping him work past his physical ailments, and Doodle shows great strides, but then all of a sudden he dies due to his heart condition. The example also creates a mood of disturbance because a brother pushes another brother to a physical breaking point that …show more content…
Poe does an excellent job of using figurative language to give the reader a better understanding the the situation that his characters are in. The situation that figurative language is used is when Montresor and Fortunato are going down a cave, and, “The wine sparkled in his [ Fortunato’s] eyes” (Poe 8). This use of figurative language shows that Fortunato is impaired, which would also mean he is unable to make rational decisions. Montresor than takes advantage of this by leading Fortunato to his death. Thus creating a disturbing mood because Montresor takes advantage of a confused man. Hurst’s example also adds understanding for the reader because it shows how sad the narrator is of Doodle’s death. The narrator does this by saying that, “For a long time, it seemed forever, I sat there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet Ibis from the heresy of the rain”(Hurst 493). This is disturbing because it shows that Doodle is dead and it also reiterates that Doodle died due to the narrator pushing him beyond his limitations that they both knew.
In conclusion Poe and Hurst both have stories with a mood of disturbance. They both do this with three literary devices. Foreshadowing, when Montresor foreshadowed Fortunato's death with a trowel, and when Doodles aunt said, red dead birds are bad luck. Irony, creates the mood in "The Cask of Amontillado"
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