An Existentialist Enactment of Revenge in The Cask of Amontillado

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe’s renowned short story The Cask of Amontillado centers on the cold and calculated revenge enacted by Montresor, revealing profound existential motivations underlying his actions. This paper employs Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy as a theoretical lens, focusing on Montresor’s active construction of his existential essence, his resistance against the gaze of the Other, and his assumption of absolute responsibility throughout the process of vengeance. On the one hand, within the existential arena of the underground catacomb, Montresor autonomously forges and confirms his identity as an avenger through meticulously rational actions. On the other hand, the enclosed, antagonistic binary relationship between Montresor and his victim, Fortunato, vividly embodies Sartre’s dictum that “hell is other people”. Ultimately, while Montresor evades legal retribution, he cannot escape the “absolute responsibility” articulated by Sartre, becoming eternally imprisoned by the weight of his avenger identity and perpetual anxiety. Poe’s narrative ambiguity deliberately strips away traditional attributions, rendering Montresor’s revenge an existential practice in the Sartrean sense: an individual’s free choice within an absurd world, demanding the full bearing of its consequences.