AMERICAN LITERATURE

MOTIVATIONAL VIDEO

INSTRUCTION:

Group yourself into 2. By partner. Discuss and make a tableau that

relate on the activity that the teacher gave.

3 minutes sharing of ideas and concepts.

Present it in the class.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Author’s Life and Career

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe.

His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves. The Allan's served as a foster family and gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe", though they never formally adopted him.

After his brother's death, Poe began more earnest attempts to start his career as a writer. He chose a difficult time in American publishing to do so. He was the first well-known American to try to live by writing alone and was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.

Returning to Baltimore, Poe secretly married Virginia, his cousin, on September 22, 1835. He was 26 and she was 13, though she is listed on the marriage certificate as being 21. Reinstated by White after promising good behaviour, Poe went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper. On May 16, 1836, he had a second wedding ceremony in Richmond with Virginia Clemm, this time in public.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano. Poe described it as breaking a blood vessel in her throat. She only partially recovered. Poe began to drink more heavily under the stress of Virginia's illness.

Virginia died there on January 30, 1847. Biographers and critics often suggest that Poe's frequent theme of the "death of a beautiful woman" stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.

Increasingly unstable after his wife's death, Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe's drinking and erratic behaviour. However, there is also strong evidence that Whitman's mother intervened and did much to derail their relationship. Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster.

He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.

GENRES

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism, which Poe strongly disliked. He referred to followers of the latter movement as "Frog-Pondians", after the pond on Boston Common.  and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor—run mad,“ lapsing into "obscurity for obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake".  Poe once wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them.

SETTING:

The story is predominantly happen in the vaults and catacombs of Montresor’s own palazzo.

CHARACTERS:

Montresor – he is the main character of the story. His calmness attached to the planned task exhibits problems with social morality and values, as seen from a less aristocrat point of view. His motives are twisted. The character looks small and dark, yet physically healthy.

Fortunato – Montresor’s friend and he always insulted Montresor.

SUMMARY:

The narrator, Montresor, opens the story by stating that he has been irreparably insulted by his acquaintance, Fortunato, and that he seeks revenge. He wants to exact this revenge, however, in a measured way, without placing himself at risk. He decides to use Fortunato’s fondness for wine against him. During the carnival season, Montresor, wearing a mask of black silk, approaches Fortunato. He tells Fortunato that he has acquired something that could pass for Amontillado, a light Spanish sherry.

Fortunato (Italian for “fortunate”) wears the multicolored costume of the jester, including a cone cap with bells. Montresor tells Fortunato that if he is too busy, he will ask a man named Luchesi to taste it. Fortunato apparently considers Luchesi a competitor and claims that this man could not tell Amontillado from other types of sherry. Fortunato is anxious to taste the wine and to determine for Montresor whether or not it is truly Amontillado. Fortunato insists that they go to Montresor’s vaults.

Montresor has strategically planned for this meeting by sending his servants away to the carnival. The two men descend into the damp vaults, which are covered with nitre, or saltpeter, a whitish mineral. Apparently aggravated by the nitre, Fortunato begins to cough.

The narrator keeps offering to bring Fortunato back home, but Fortunato refuses. Instead, he accepts wine as the antidote to his cough. The men continue to explore the deep vaults, which are full of the dead bodies of the Montresor family. In response to the crypts, Fortunato claims to have forgotten Montresor’s family coat of arms and motto. Montresor responds that his family shield portrays “a huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.” The motto, in Latin, is “nemo me impune lacessit,” that is, “no one attacks me with impunity.”

The men walk into a crypt, where human bones decorate three of the four walls. The bones from the fourth wall have been thrown down on the ground. On the exposed wall is a small recess, where Montresor tells Fortunato that the Amontillado is being stored. Fortunato, now heavily intoxicated, goes to the back of the recess. Montresor then suddenly chains the slow-footed Fortunato to a stone.

Taunting Fortunato with an offer to leave, Montresor begins to wall up the entrance to this small crypt, thereby trapping Fortunato inside. Fortunato screams confusedly as Montresor builds the first layer of the wall. The alcohol soon wears off and Fortunato moans, terrified and helpless. As the layers continue to rise, though, Fortunato falls silent. Just as Montresor is about to finish, Fortunato laughs as if Montresor is playing a joke on him, but Montresor is not joking. At last, after a final plea, “For the love of God, Montresor!” Fortunato stops answering Montresor, who then twice calls out his enemy’s name. After no response, Montresor claims that his heart feels sick because of the dampness of the catacombs.

He fits the last stone into place and plasters the wall closed, his actions accompanied only by the jingling of Fortunato’s bells. He finally repositions the bones on the fourth wall. For fifty years, he writes, no one has disturbed them. He concludes with a Latin phrase meaning “May he rest in peace.”

POINT OF VIEW:

- It was in the first person point of view

THEME:

Poe’s purpose of the story was to show the elaborate lengths that some people might go to when it comes to revenge.

IMAGERY:

The main imagery the writer uses is when he is burying Fortunato into the wall, you can also visualize Fortunato within the wall laughing assuming this is just a joke. The imagery affects the mood of the story by showing that Montresor has a plan to do something evil, although just in his eyes, to his contemporary, Fortunato. 

SYMBOLISM:

A question to consider could possibly be that the wall that Montresor buried Fortunato in the story is not what he literally meant. Montresor could have surrounded himself with a wall to protect himself from the pain and anger that Fortunato caused by his insults. Fortunato is used as a symbol of what Montresor is against in regard to his beliefs and family values. The trowel that Montresor presents to Fortunato is also a symbol of two different meanings because of different perceptions of the object. Montresor’s perception is of the task to be carried out, and Fortunato’s is that of the Freemasons.

STYLE AND TONE:Poe used the dialect of the 19th

century, which is true for the time period that the story was written in and about. The author uses a lot of formal words to describe common things. These words seem strange to us, but I’m sure at the time the story was written it was the acceptable way to talk. Poe’s attitude towards the events in the story was morbidly positive because this story is written in first person narrative giving the author complete control throughout the story; making it go the way he intended. The tone impacts the story by giving it a spooky dark feel as Fortunato was lead through Montresor’s vaults to the catacombs, where he was chained and entombed and left to die.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE:Poe doesn’t use very much, if any, simile. He does however use metaphor when he tell Fortunato that is family motto is “nemo me impune lacessit” meaning that no one touches him with impunity, because to him Fortunato had been doing just that by insulting his honor with his egotistical boasting and inconsideration. Another use of metaphor is in the presentation and use of the trowel through symbolism. There is some personification through Montresor’s family motto and him taking revenge on Fortunato in the name of justice as if Montresor was acting as in the name of God; for what is an abomination to all that is sacred in living.

MATCHING TYPE:

Part A

1.) to my palazzo2.) a true virtuoso3.) caused the

flambeaux4.) a pipe of what

passes for Amontillado

5.) a connoisseur in wine

Part B

a. a critic, expert b. an impressive private

esp. in Italy c. flaming torch d. a pale dry sherry from

Montilla, a town in Andalucia

e. someone very skillful in fine arts, especially in playing musical instruments

UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT

1.) Who is the narrator of the story?

2.) Why did he plan revenge upon Fortunato?

3.) What is his idea of revenge?

4.) In his plan of revenge, what weak point of his enemy did he attack?

5.) How did he execute his revenge?

6.) If you were Montresor, would you have done the same thing? Why?

LITERARY VALUE LEARNED

After going through “The Cask of Amontillado,” how would you react when a wrong is done to you?

ASSIGNMENT:

On a bond paper, draw an object which represents “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Thank You for Listening!!GOD Bless YOU!

Prepared By: Charlene T. BagueJeffrey Escasura

III-ED1