Final Fiction Reading Response-"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe

For my final fiction response I decided to write about "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe. The thing that most interested me about this piece was Poe's uncanny ability to craft character. Therefore, I will explore what Poe did to create a unique, complex psyche for Montresor.
Poe does a great job of using the first person. Since it is from Montresor's perspective, the reader is never actually told that he is crazy. Nevertheless, Poe is able to make this excessively clear in only a handful of pages. Being directly told that Montresor was insane would have lacked subtlety and simplified the piece. Instead, this undefined, complex, gradually revealed character adds ambiguity and entertainment. The character Poe weaves is unique, and this uniqueness continues to interest people to this day. Also, since everyone's brain works differently, the character's unique psyche increases realism as well. In contrast, a cliche characterization would have been boring and felt fake. That aside, how did Poe actually develop this character so well? I think that he does a great job using details and action, not narration, to craft Montresor. Over the course of the story these little (sometimes unconnected) details begin to add up, revealing Montresor's troubled psyche. The first thing I noticed was his immediate thoughts to draw out the process of the murder, so that he could enjoy it more thoroughly. Also, Montresor sadistically attempts to convince Fortunato to turn around over and over, knowing full well that he would never turn back again. Montresor's choice to chain him alive was so elaborate and tortuous that it clearly expressed his disturbance. As does the instance in which he takes a break from laying mortar in order to more fully enjoy Fortunato's screaming. There are also more subtle details that enhance the character. For example, Montresor keeps mentioning nitre, a seemingly insignificant detail, to the point where he is clearly deranged. He also showers Fortunato with praise just before he murders him, a clearly sick thing to do. In another instance, Montresor mentions the precise measurements of the final cask, indicating a strange attention to detail and that he had been planning the murder for a long time. Lastly, the denial of the real cause of his emotion and sickness, "My heart grew sick-on account of the dampness of the catacombs," adds another layer of complexity to the character. In this way Poe is able to craft such interesting, enduring characters.