Lesson Plan/Teaching Notes

• What's the first thing you think about when you hear mention of a Poe story?

In case you haven't already heard, Poe is interested in death.

Terms/People to know

• Temperance: The anti-drinking movement prevalent in the 19 th century. Timothy Shay Arthur Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854) was a popular play and novel that “exposed” the perils of drink. Hawthorne’s “Rills from a Town Pump” is part of the movement as well.
• Gothic: fiction that revels in gloomy and mysterious settings (often castles and with other medieval props), strange, often supernatural occurrences, and dangerous circumstances for the protagonist. And of course, there is the beautiful maiden in perilous circumstances.

Discussion questions

Cask

Irony and psychology are strange bedfellows in this darkly humorous tale of revenge. The irony in this story, as the critic Charles May points out, works on two levels (79-80). The first stems from the organization or setting of the tale – which I'll call narrative irony. These are aspects that Montresor, as narrator, doesn't control, but that Poe, as creator of the narrative, certainly does. The second stems from Montresor's obvious relish in toying with Fortunato, knowing that he will soon be dead.

What we'll be looking at is how, though this story seems ammoral -- told from the viewpoint of a killer, it is actual very moralistic

• Point of view -- discuss
• look closely at the opening sentence -- is too much information packed into it? What does the sentence tell you about the narrator? Why doesn't Poe tell us Montresor's "injuries"?
• Would this story be as effective if told in the third person? Why or why not?
• The irony is heavy here. Mark the ironic passages – what do they contribute to the story? What do they reveal about the characters?
• Why doesn't Poe let us know what the "insults" suffered by Montresor were?
• The setting is an important component of all of Poe's fiction. How does it work here? Consider the time, the place, and any objects in the story.

Even the setting of the story is rich in psychological symbolism. The Russian Critic Mikal Bakhtin argued that “During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom” (7). Carnival’s “freedom” exists outside the contraints of law or religion; in other words, outside the influence of the forces which proscribe and/or enforce the mores and social codes of a culture. Set against this backdrop, a time when people are encouraged to cast aside the restraints society in pursit of hedonistic pleasures, “Cask” illustrates the dangers of overindulging the id. This Freudian reading can be further illustrated by the descent into the crypt. This not only evokes a sense of claustrophobia and an obvious allusion to graves, it also suggests a slow descent into the unconscious of Montresor. Only after delving deep into the unconsious, into the savage and primitive world of the id, can such acts be consumated. Of course, this was written long before Freud had articulated his theories of the unconscious, but this shows how artists long before Freud had given these ideas names, had recognized and exploited them in fiction.

• Why does Poe make F keep repeating "Amontillado!" (1593, 6, 7)
• What is M. doing on page 1594 when he says "You are sick . . ." and " " and " " and even later when he tells him (1116) "Once more let me implore you. . ."
• Is there any humor in this story? 1595
• In the family crest, who is Montresor and who is Fortunato? 1595
• Is he being ironic about his heart? (1118)
• What about the final words? Are they directed to Fortunato . . . or to Montresor?
• What fears of readers is Poe playing with? fear of burial, fear of evil (like Hannibel the Cannibal) "1117 "The noise lasted .. ."
• One critic writes that the "Cask" is "on its surface, completely amoral, (yet) is perhaps the most moral of his tales" (qtd. in Reynolds 72)
• What about Fortunato?
• What is the significance of Montresor's coat of arms?
• What is the significance of the names of the two characters? Fortunato = a pun -- both "lucky" and "fated"
• their costumes? the flagon of De Grave?
• IRONY Montresor gives Fortunato several hints of what's coming -- why? Does he secretly want Fortunato to catch on?
• Why should the narrator's heart grow sick? What is the meaning of Montresor's own scream? Why does he choose to tell it 50 years later? Who is he talking to?
• Reynolds says this fits into a "Dark Temperance" mode
• Characterize the narrator. Does his character develop or remain static? How can you tell that he understands human psychology?
• What hints does Montresor give Fortunato several hints of what's coming? Why does he do this? Does he secretly want Fortunato to catch on, or is Poe just manipulating the reader?
• Apropos of Poe's essay on 1488, does "The Cask" have only a single effect? If so, what is it? If not, what are they?
• Is Montresor insane?
• Who is Montresor talking to – and why?
• Does Montresor succeed in his revenge?

1858 escape coffin patent

“Masque of the Red Death”

• Prospero: ironic b/c he is both prosperous (a duke) and poor in moral (turning his back on his people). Also echo of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
• Why have Prospero love “the bizarre” (1568)?
• What’s the purpose of the clock in this story? (1568) What does it symbolize? What is Prospero trying to stop?
• What does he set up in his abbey? “all the appliances of pleasure” (1568)
• Why so many references to dreams? (1569)
• Why does the mummer of the red death appear at midnight?
• “who dares thus to make a mockery of our woes?” (1570) – who says this? Who did this refer to? How is this ironic?
• Metonomy: part for the whole; synechdoche:

Group Questions: Poe – making connections

• Both “Cask” and “Masque” have carnival scenes. The Russian Critic Mikal Bakhtin has argued that “During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom” (7). Carnival’s “freedom” exists outside the contraints of law or religion; in other words, outside the influence of the forces which proscribe and/or enforce the mores and social codes of a culture. Why, then, does Poe include them? What, for instance, is Poe suggesting about human psychology? Consider, especially, Freud’s theory of the moral development.
• What’s the connection between “The Haunted Palace” ( 1540) and the story itself?
• Richard Wilbur, commenting on the prevalence of dreams in Poe’s fiction, notes that “the dreaming psyche separates itself wholly from the bodily senses – the “rudimental senses,” as Poe called them” (Wilbur 820). What does this dream symbolism lend to Poe’s fiction? What does he gain by including it?
• Any connections – or differences – between Poe and Transcendental theories or ideas?

Voices from the Past

Dily Richards, writing from Mason, Tennessee in 1855, delineates a roll-call of the dead to his brother-in-law: "Your Brother Jon is ded [;] he Died the 11 of Sptenber last I am her by Alone. . . .Jon dident live but five days[.] [S]uppose he died with the fluks . . . . Ammy Richards is dead[,] Rebecah Richards is dead [,] Henison is Dead[.] [M]y yongest child About Twenty too years old an my our step son died in Mexico[.] Burrels oldest son is dead [;] he was About twenty years old[.][H]is dagter is dead[;] she was About five years old" (Saum 82)

A Georgian girl, from a school composition titled "Things that I Love," penned a rhapsody to graveyards which mirrors Nell's passion: "I love to walk in the graveyard, and read the inscriptions on the tombstones, the weeping willows fall so gracefully over the silent dead; here and there you may see a rosebush, or a bed of violets, planted and trained by some gentle hand over a dead friend" (Saum 91)

Godey's Lady's Book vol. 26, 1843 boasts two poems entitled "The Dying Girl" Henry S. Hagert, and Mrs. John K. Lasky, as well as "The Memory of the Departed" "The Young Southern Widow" "The Mother's Lament" (about the death of a child), "The Trial of the Dead" "The Angel's Visits" ("And the Angel soars to his home on high,/While faith reveals, to the mother's eye,/ That he bears her sweet child to heaven!" Mrs. S. J. Hale), "The Mourner" ("She sleeps -- `the long and dreamless sleep' -- that voice is silent now,/ The seal is on her clay-cold lip, the death-dew on her brow.). And even a title as seemingly as carefree and lively as "To a Child at Play" ends, after picturing the "sweet frolic" of a "fair and lovely boy," ends with "And, when thy life is o'er,/ Translate thee to that `better land'/ Where sin and sorrow come not, and/ Where death shall be no more." (127) Lewis J. Cist.

Pictures from the Past

On Poe's popularity

http://www.lfchosting.com/eapoe/GENINFO/poef001.htm

Letter from Poe about revision to "The Raven." Click to enlarge

Quotes from critics

"Poe famoulsy borrowed crime stories from the penny press" (Reynolds Beneath 171)

"Sensational literature . . . . had precedents in foreign collections of criminal biography such as teh Newgate Calendar. .[he notes dickens, bulwer and ainsworth] . . Since there was still no international copyright, American publishers issued many cheap reprintsing of such foreign sensational writings, which found a huge market in America." (Reynolds beneath 172)

"The crucial transitional moment in American jounalism was 1833, the year that the first penny newspapers, Horation David Sheppard's New York Morning Post and Benjamin H. Day's New York Sun, appeared." (Reynolds Beneath 174)

On James Gordon Bennet's New York Herald: Bennet said "[I found out that Americans] were more ready to seek six columns of the details of a brutal murder, or the testimony of a divorce case, or the trial of a divine for improprieties of conduct, than the saem amount of words poured forth by the genius of the noblest author of th etimes" (qtd. in Reynolds Beneath 174)

George Wilkes made a series in 1847 entitled The lives of the Felons, or American Criminal Calendar (Reynolds Beneath 177) compare with newgate calendar

John Harpe -- convicted murderer circa 1830s: "I have not the least regret for the murders I have committed. I have taekn pleasure in the sight of humna blood shed by my own hands . . . I curse you and all mankind, for I hate you and the whole human race. One of my own childern I have murdered. . . Think you then that I cared for the blood of strangers?" (Reynolds Beneath 177)

"What relations did the penny papers and the crime writings have with the major literature? In the most direct sense, they generated popular images and stereotypes that were absorbed into the major literature" (Reynolds Beneath 177)

"Whereas previous American crime reports, from Puritan times through the mid -- 1820s, were carful to draw religious or moral lessons from criminals' experiences, the antebellum reports wer, in the main, gloating rcords of unthinkable atrocities obviously designed to please a ssensation-hungry public" (Reynolds Beneath 178) But Dickens was able to combine the two and thus avoid censure

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Last Revised August 2002
David Bordelon