In the short story, The Cask of Amontillado, it seems as if the characters of Montresor
             and Fortunato contrast each other sharply. In the character of Montresor, you have someone who
             thinks a lot. Montresor also seems exceedingly wise. When you come to the character of
             Fortunato, the reader gets an impression of him as a loud buffoon, someone who wants merely to
             have a good time and drink wine. But it seems as if there is something a little deeper than that.
             The character Montresor is intelligent and cunning to an extreme. The name Montresor
             may have been Poe's way of saying that he was a monster. Montresor said that he had survived a
             thousand insults at the hands of Fortunato, yet the most recent attack made him angry enough to
             kill him. Montresor went about killing him in a quiet way though. Never once did he reveal any
             distaste towards Fortunato in order that he would catch him off guard. This is evident by the fact
             that neither he nor Fortunato show any signs of distaste towards each other in their speech with
             one another on the walk down the catacombs. The way Montresor tells of the well laid plan he
             laid for Fortunato shows his great intelligence. The one characteristic of Montresor that I have
             not mentioned was the way he showed no remorse the entire tale. With no guilt, there was no
             chance of him ever getting caught by stumbling into a confession.
             However intelligent Montresor was, Fortunato seemed an exact opposite. Fortunato
             seemed to be a character who was the life of the party. the very fact that he was in a jester's
             outfit suggests that he was an active participant in the carnival. The man was a wine connoisseur
             which suggests that he was a heavy drinker in order to get such a taste for wine. Since he was
             always drinking wine, it may be thought that he was a loud friendly person all of the time on the
             account that he was drunk so often. When he m...