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Examples Of Verbal Irony In The Cask Of Amontillado

Decent Essays

The Ironic Death In “The Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allan Poe tells a story of a man named Fortunato, a professional wine taster, who has foolishly brought death upon himself. Fortunato has managed to anger a man with the name Montresor who has hatched a plan of revenge during a great carnival. To help the reader fully understand Poe uses three different kinds of irony verbal, dramatic, and situational. The verbal being their conversation, the dramatical, when he jokes about his health, and the situational when he is dressed as a jester. The first example is of verbal irony. When Montresor runs into Fortunato at the beginning of the story, he says, “My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met” (POE 237). To Fortunato this may have seemed as a friendly thing to say. However, what he actually was saying is, today is your lucky day, because Montresor knows he will finally have a chance to kill him. Later, Montresor appears to be worried about Fortunato’s health as they travel deeper into the catacombs and says, “We will go back. Your health is precious” (POE 238). When Montresor said this, he has no intention of going back and was not worried about Fortunato’s health. He was actually just saying that almost in mockery to lure him further in. …show more content…

An example of dramatic irony is when Fortunato tells Montresor not to worry about his health and that “the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I will not die of a cough” (POE 238) Montresor then replies, “True–true.” When the reader reads this, they see that Fortunato is clueless of Montresor’s true plan is and while he tells Fortunato he will be all right. That he will not die, he is planning to kill him. This is dramatic because we as the reader feel a sense of sorrow because we know the truth about what will

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