Characterisation of Montresor
First of all, there are basic features which the two characters Montresor and Fortunato have in common, namely, both of them live in Italy and have a good knowledge about wine, and therefore are passionate wine collectors and of course also wine drinkers, but of course no alcoholics. These facts are quite important for the development of the short story as they are the facts Montresors plan is based on.
Montresor is quite an interesting character. He wants to take revenge on his enemy Fortunato, because he insulted him heavily, by killing him. For him, this killing does not only mean receiving satisfaction for his insulted pride, but also achieving the fact that his victim sees, that he is Fortunato´s revenger and only then, Montresor can feel satisfied.
Although he appears to be a psychopath in the way he wants to kill his enemy, he is a master of system, accuracy and calm, and he does not lose his temper at all. He has thought about his plan how to kill Fortunato quite carefully and in detail, so that he can make sure that nothing unexpected will happen. Therefore it is easy to tell that he is a perfectionist who knows about his work very well and does everything to protect himself from situations he cannot manage. In order to be able to prepare everything, he must already have known the very day on which he would meet his victim, which is a day during the carnival season, when everybody walks around in disguise so that noone would notice the disappearance of Fortunato, because nobody would even recognize him.
As Montresor knows about his victim´s passion, he has chosen a good starting point for his strategy, which is taking him to his vaults by asking him to examine the identity of a cask of Amontillado which he bought, in order to poison him with the nitre having formed on the ceiling to which he will react quite sensitively, as he has a cough, and then, when he is too weak to offer resistance, fetter him in a recess and wall up the entry to make him die slowly. Obviously, his plan works at every single step, as he is really able to go through it without making one single mistake, which leads to the conclusion that Montresor is a very intelligent person who neither possesses any conscience nor has any idea of solving problems in a more common way.
Sympathy seems to be an unknown word for him as he does not show any weakness towards his victim at all, which would be a normal human reaction, as nobody really wants to torment others. But he is more interested in achieving his aims and in making himself feel better by eliminating his enemy.
When you take a closer look at the history of his family, the kind of punishing others has a quite long tradition. Firstly, human bones are distributed all over the vault, so one could guess that several other people also had to die here. Secondly, the arms of the family might be the most remarkable thing. The snake which presents evil, is stepped on by a human foot, who presents in that case justice and the snake, wanting to defend itself, bites into that foot. This scene is quite old and has its origin in the bible, as god first described this scene to the human being, who sinned by taking the forbidden fruit of the tree, only because the snake seduced him. Therefore, god made the animal and the human being enemies forever.
Now, if you compare this with the positions in the short story, you see that Montresor understands himself as a kind of punisher, who practices justice on the snake who in fact seduced him to take this kind of revenge upon it. Actually, what he does, seems not illegal to him and should therefore not be punished, as his punishment is wanted by god himself.
Marcella Saipt