The wealthy could opt for family catacombs beneath their estates.

The narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado” carries out his

revenge within the catacombs beneath his palazzo.

The narrator is able to lure his victim into the catacombs with the promise of amontillado, a

fine sherry wine.(The l’s are pronounced like the

l’s in tortilla.)

The “supreme madness” of Carnival aside, why doesn’t the suggestion of a journey to the catacombs for a taste of wine seem odd or suspicious to the

victim?

The Storage of Wine

For wines to maintain their best quality, they need to be stored at

fairly cool and constant temperatures.

During the time period in which the story is set, modern electric refrigeration was not available.

To protect wine collections, connoisseurs adopted the practice of storing wines under the ground where temperatures remain ideal

year-round.

Basements, cellars, and even catacombs serve as excellent

storage facilities for the precious vintages.

Herein, where wine bottles intermingle with the bones of the dead, the narrator carries out his

plan for revenge.

Edgar Allan Poe• Author, not the narrator, of

the story.• Developed characters

whose sanity is questionable.

• Universally credited as a significant

contributor to the development of the short story as a literary genre.

“The Cask of Amontillado”

ENJOY THIS LITERARY JOURNEY INTO THE DARK

SIDE OF REVENGE!

Sources

Coil, Suzanne M. Mardi Gras (photos by Michael Osborne). New York: Macmillan, 1994. France: A Culinary Journey. San Francisco: Collins, 1992. Poe, Edgar A. “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1998. “Underground Paris: The Catacombs.” www.triggur.org.