The Cask of Amontillado - Psychology and Murder Motivation

Cici Liu

The short story

30.10.2017

“The Cask of Amontillado”: Psychology and murder motivation

 “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe, is a brilliant short story which successfully grasped the atmosphere of the story and explored the inner world of people to find the source of fear is the mind. The theme of “The Cask of Amontillado” is clearly indicate as betrayal and revenge. Luchresi is a main character of the story, finally he confided that he concealed for half a century of secret: half a century ago, in the family vault and the cellar, he buried “his friend” Fortunato. So Luchresi did not establish a real friend relationship with Fortunato, after I checked some inference and speculation, I found some clues to prove his motive for murder.

  According to Sigmund Freud, when someone creates a special impulse, but was opposed by another strong trend, under normal circumstances, impulse and resistance for a period of time under the stalemate state of consciousness, instinctive impulse overwhelmed eventually disappear, this is the psychological defense mechanism in effect (Freud 4). The psychological defense mechanism is a function of self-defense, there are contradictions and conflicts between the ID and superego, when in the personality self and reality, people can feel pain and anxiety, ego can imperceptibly adjust the relationship between both sides of the conflict in some way, play a role in monitoring the superego, and my desire you can get some kind of satisfaction, thereby alleviating anxiety, eliminate pain. But after shocked, some people chose to retreat and not let their emotions go out. This unreleased emotion is the hidden danger of hysteria. Once the failure of the psychological defense mechanism of the self, it will have devastating consequences. In the story, Luchresi said that “the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” (Allan Poe 1). Therefore, the process of his psychological development was from hurt to endure and continue to be insulted, and finally made revenge, in other words, in other words, this process was from the contradiction to the suppression of contradictions and exacerbate contradictions, and then appropriate to vent the contradiction.

The story did not give a clear account of Luchresi family background and social status, but after my careful reading, I found that when Luchresi tricked Fortunato into helping him identify the cask of Amontillado, he said that “you are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was” (Allan Poe 2), This was a clear indicated that Luchresi was rich, everyone respected, admired, and lived happily in the past as same as Fortunato now. In addition, when they went to find the cask of Amontillado, the story mentioned that his mansion house with several servants, suites, and a huge vintry underground, even Fortunato exclaimed it was really extensive, meanwhile, Luchresi said that “The Montresors, it were a great and numerous family (Allan Poe 2)”, but this glory was also in the past. Then their conversation referred to the arms of Luchresi’s family, which is “a huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel (Allan Poe 2) ” , said by Luchresi, and also his family's traditional injunction is “Nemo me impune lacessit (Allan Poe 2)”, These clues were indicated that he was born in a noble family and his family was famous in the past, but by the time it had gone down during his generation, so defending family dignity and restoring family glory was undoubtedly his responsibility.