Many short fiction writers published work in the middle of the 1800s but nobody had published work as gritty and macabre as Edgar Allen Poe. In The Cask of Amontillado, a tale of one man’s revenge on another, we see this dark story-telling Poe was famous for. The less fortunate man, ironically named Fortunato, is the prized victim for the less fortunate and vengeful Montresor. Looking at Fortunato throughout the course of the story leaves a well-shaped character albeit a bland one. He is a very arrogant character, allowing himself to trust people who may very well be untrustworthy, and he is also very disliked for this and other reasons. From the beginning of the story, and nearly through the entirety of it, Fortunato was intoxicated. It was around the time of carnival season and there were many festivities so he was getting himself in the celebratory mood. Montresor had very carefully concocted how he would use this to his advantage when enacting his revenge. In their first encounter Fortunato was drunk and very sure of himself. It was his own narcissism that played a huge role in how Montresor’s plan was able to be carried out. He relied upon Fortunato’s arrogance as well as his inebriated state to fool him. Poe when writing this probably decided to make Fortunato such an arrogant man because if anyone else had been in the situation he finds himself in they would not have kept following Montresor. This pompousness displayed by Fortunato was perhaps what had