"The Cask of Amontillado" has a high amount of symbolism, irony, and hidden messages scattered throughout. The story quickly begins to scare the reader through the narrator's crazed mind, shown through his need for a great amount of revenge for simple verbal insults and the langue style.

The character Fortunato, ironically meaning "fortunate one" in Italian, is dressed for the carnival as a court jester. Essentially, Fortunato, the fool, is fooled by Montresor into a tragic death. Montresor's family's coat-of-arms foreshadows his deeds later in the story. The shield he describes is a human foot crushing a serpent under it. The foot represents Montresor, and the snake Fortunato, as he is crushed by Montresor, possibly after biting, or symbolically insulting the foot.

The setting of the story appears to be symbolic as well. The fact that Montresor brings Fortunato deep underground into the catacombs is symbolic of the...