Symbolism In 'The Cask Of Amontillado'

#1 Young Goodman Brown’s journey symbolizes his eye-opening of what the real world is. He realizes that the people he knew weren’t the people he once knew. At first, something that may strike a reader is the devil saying to the catechism teacher, “Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend(80).” first showing that some aren’t who he thinks. Throughout the story we find the word devil scattered, and not just on its own, being the person he met first when walking through the woods, calling people devilish instead of something to seem more hated than evil. This eventually realizing that those he knows aren’t as good as he believes, which leads to the second part, his loss of faith. His wife, Faith, doesn’t want him to go on the journey believing what will happen could. He eventually loses

In some ways the wine given to Fortunato can be looked at as a nod to either Poe’s alcohol addiction or simply a way to distract Fortunato, but I feel like the wine is almost a reference to something in the real world. I feel like this is actually a nod to medicine and a possible cure. Montresor is often giving Fortunato some of his wine throughout the story and is able to get Fortunato into his catacombs. This wine can almost be looked at as medicine, he even says, “A draught of Medoc will defend us from the damps (1128).” which further emphasizes on this idea. Fortunato is expecting the Amontillado at the end of the catacombs and is even still expecting it while he is chained and being locked in as shown by, “yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late (1131)?” Which, without knowledge of history and how the sick were,could possibly be how those that did die or go into a coma may have been, expecting a cure for whatever they had, only to never get that cure. This greatly contributes to that dark theme of the story and how it refers to the general world at the