"The Cask of Amontillado"

"My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so." (Poe 939). I think this line was Edgar Allen Poe's way of using the verbal irony that we discussed in class to show that Montresor was really sick and possibly even feeling guilty over what he had done to Fortunato. As Montresor was getting the chains ready to restrain Fortunato, I believe the guilt started to hit him. He said, "For a brief moment, I hesitated, I trembled" (Poe 939). The simple act of Montresor hesitating, even for a moment, leads me to believe that the "sickness" he felt in his heart at the end of the story was a genuine feeling of regret forming over what he had done. I think the sick feeling that Montresor felt was something he did not want to feel, and that is why he blamed the dampness on his feelings. As much as Montresor hated Fortunated, he began to feel some remorse at the end of the story.
Montresor's hatred for Fortunato was so bad that he planned to kill him in a very cruel way. My favorite line in this story was, "He repeated the movement-a grotesque one" (Poe 937). Just the word grotesque gave me the image of disgust that he felt for Fortunato, and the fact that Montresor would describe his enemy's mere movements as "grotesque" led me to see how much he really hated him and wanted to see Fortunato gone for good.