Cask Of Amontillado And A Rose For Emily: A Comparative Analysis

Murder is highly regarded as one of man’s greatest sins, but nonetheless has been extremely prevalent throughout human history. There are many different reasons one might kill someone, such as for pleasure, with malice, or even as a punishment. In some instances it occurs on a large scale, such as the Jewish Holocaust or in cases of war. Despite how commonplace murder seems in human society, the vast majority believe it is undeniably wrong and that only someone who is mentally ill could commit such a disturbing crime. In Edgar Allan Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado and William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, the reader is shown how both main characters Montresor (A Cask of Amontillado) and Emily (A Rose for Emily) commit homicide and how the story

Emily not only had a toxic upbringing by living with her extremely controlling father, but has a predisposition to mental disorders which is made known when the narrator claims “People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last (Faulkner 2).” Montresor’s family has been ingrained with revenge being seen as a necessary principle or moral to live by for generations, but there is no disclaimed knowledge of a history of mental disorders. This creates an argument for nature versus nurture, in this case meaning people are either born killers or made into killers. It appears that even though both nature and nurture can play an equal role but are not mutually exclusive, a person’s genetic make-up and inherent mental state overrides nurture. For example, Emily’s father could have been loving and supportive, but it would not change the fact that Emily is naturally unstable and therefore she would have most likely displayed the same behaviors. Perhaps if mental illness was treated and observed differently in the time Emily and Montresor were alive, the deaths of Homer Barron and Fortunato could have been avoided. Emily would have grown up knowing mental illness runs in her family and could have sought professional help during the onset or even before the erratic behavior began. If there was anger management therapy during the medieval times when Montresor and his family were alive, they would have found a healthy outlet to release their angry and spiteful feelings, thus ending the cycle of learned violence. Mental disorders were generally overlooked and poorly addressed in the past, but have come a long way in terms of understanding them and treatment options in modern times. There is now wide scale