SOURCE: "Conflict and Motive in The Cask of Amontillado'," in Poe Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1972, pp. 50-1.

In the following essay, Rocks provides a cultural context for the Catholic-Masonic conflict that informs the plot.

Critical commentary on "The Cask of Amontillado" has tended to dismiss the question of Montresor's motive in killing Fortunato, but the tone of the story betrays a narrator confused and troubled by the guilt of a vengeful murder that has deprived him of spiritual peace and sanctifying grace, though convinced of the righteousness of his act. His uneasy conscience has become a kind of retribution for his crime, and the benediction "In pace requiescat" at the conclusion of the story is ironic in the light of his spiritual isolation and psychological unrest and his knowledge that his own soul is damned by mortal sin. Fortunato and Montresor were political enemies but they can also...