"" has a dark,
ominous mood, established fairly quickly by the narrator, Montresor. He speaks so formally that
he immediately impresses the reader as being very smart and somewhat cold. His first line --
"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon
insult, I vowed revenge" -- relies on(also called overstatement) in order to impress his
audience with just how incredibly injured Montresor felt. Then, his declaration that "I
must not only punish, but punish with impunity" lets us know that he is both intelligent
and calculating; it isn't enough for him to simply exact revenge, but he must do so without any
chance of being punished in return. This means that he will have to employ a great deal of
deception in order to achieve his brutal goal because no one can know that he is guilty of it.
Further, he seems intelligent and calculating enough to achieve such a goal.
Montresor also says, in the second paragraph,
It
must be understood, that neither by word or deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good
will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile
now was at the thought of his immolation.
These lines
also help to show how cunning and successful Montresor is at hiding his real intentions from his
victim. The fact that Montresor's goal is Fortunato's "immolation" -- a word that
typically means complete destruction by fire -- indicates both the severity of his anger and the
violence of which he is capable. Words like "insult" and "impunity" and
"immolation" help to darken the mood of the story, rendering it ominous and
suspenseful, and to foreshadow Fortunato's horrific ending.
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