The Cask of Amontillado Lesson Plans: Pre-Reading, Discussion Questions, and Activities

A tale of a cruel murder told by the very man who committed the crime? Yes, please!

But the thing about Poe’s classic story is that without the right support, students will rage quit after the first sentence—and justifiably so.  

An unhinged, delusional narrator who obfuscates his guilt mostly by using overly complicated words and convoluted sentence structures makes for a challenging read for sure.  And if students don’t have a way to get past their frustration, they’ll never move beyond even the most basic understanding of the text.

But if they have the right way in, the story is so delightfully evil that students really love it.  I mean, what’s not to love about a seemingly perfect murder?

But more than just understanding Montresor’s manipulative methods for murder and revenge, what I want students to get out of their study of this text is the way that Montresor is an unreliable narrator who, in addition to being a guilty murderer who can’t help but draw attention to his crime, is a storyteller who is practically begging to be called out on his lies. 

And dealing with someone who may or may not want to get caught and may or may not be lying about what they did? That’s something students can definitely relate to.

I’ve untangled those convoluted sentences and built a complete unit on “The Cask of Amontillado” that helps students get past their frustration and into the fun of this story all while sharpening their analysis and writing skills. 

Here are my 6 tips for teaching the best evil gloating story ever.

Play with the delightfully dark vocabulary.   In short, there are a lot of very hard words in this text, and so I suggest starting students off by looking up definitions of the key words from the story before they dive in. One of my favorite pre-reading activities is having students write a quick story with the vocab, especially when the words are as juicy as the ones here. I mean, how can you not come up with something good when you’re using words like “immolation,” “crypt,” and “clamor.”

Get students pondering revenge before they read.  I think students find revenge to be an interesting topic, especially when that revenge involves a crazy murder plan, but it’s not necessarily something they think about in a nuanced way.  21st-century teens likely think that they’re not supposed to think revenge is okay—but they also likely don’t really go further than “revenge is bad” in their thinking. 

So as a pre-reading activity, I like to have them read, write, and discuss some famous quotes on revenge.  William Makepeace Thackeray’s quote that “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural” or a quote from Shakespeare like “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself” help them to consider the different sides of the topic. A final fun option for these quotes is to place them around the room and instruct students to stand by the quote that best explains their views after they’ve spent some time writing and discussing the different quotes.

Take it super slow with the opening paragraph. In order to head off that rage quitting, I recommend taking it really slowly at first—in fact, I have four questions on the first (insanely dense) paragraph alone. I want students to notice, for example, that Montresor exaggerates when he says that Fortunato has injured him “thousands” of times, and that he doesn’t care much about the actual insult— since he never tells us what it is—as much as he cares about his plot for revenge. 

I also want students to really take in Montresor’s views on revenge in that first paragraph, and so I task them with paraphrasing each of the statements that Montresor makes about revenge.  I pull out four of the sentences from the story for this. When students put these difficult sentences into their own words they start to see how skilled Montresor is at using words—and they start to realize that maybe they can’t quite trust everything he says at face value.

Give students close reading questions that get them grappling with the text. The rest of the questions guide students through Montresor’s plan—the steps he takes, the strategies he uses, and how he reacts to the slow death of his sworn enemy. And I also make sure that they fully understand any passages that they’ll need later in our discussion.  

As always, my goal is to guide students toward passages worth examining and give them enough support to work through the language, while leaving the noticing, questioning, and analysis to them.

Embrace the ambiguity and nuance of the story through discussion questions. This is where the hard work of learning new vocabulary, considering different views on revenge, and really grappling with the language of the text pays off.  

To me, the perfect discussion question is one where the story offers ample evidence to support both sides of the question. Since Montresor is a very unreliable narrator, we can’t always take what he says at face value, so looking at all possible answers to the questions is a great way to get students to embrace ambiguity and nuance in writing. 

For example, I love the question “Montresor’s family coat of arms depicts a foot crushing a serpent whose fangs are imbedded in the heel of that foot. Do you think that Montresor is the foot or the serpent in this scenario?” Students can really get into defending both sides of that question with details from the text.  I also like to ask whether Montresor is telling the story to confess his crime or brag about his perfect murder—and challenge students to defend both interpretations.

Give a writing assignment that lets students see the true joy in ironic writing.  I love to have students end their study of this classic story by writing their own deliciously ironic and darkly humorous text.

My ironic how-to essay is the actual GOAT—seriously, this assignment is so much fun. It’s also the kind of writing assignment that really teaches itself as students revise and edit their work in order to write the funniest essay and get a laugh out of their peers.  Topics might include “Montresor’s Guide to the Perfect Murder” or “How to Get Drunk and Get Murdered” by Fortunato.  Adding some concrete elements like quotes from the text to back up their ideas and some vocab words from the source text really make this fun assignment quite rigorous. 

Just make sure to leave enough time for this assignment as students will—I kid you not—want to participate in spontaneous peer editing sessions and ask for tips to make their essays as funny as possible.

It’s a lot, but I think this story deserves to be taught well! Want it all done for you? The approach in this complete unit on “The Cask of Amontillado” will get students appreciating, understanding, and enjoying this classic story about an evil mastermind and his guilty or not-so-guilty conscience.

Image Credit: http://see2believe.co.uk