ard” (268). The reader must also realize that it was the carnival season and that Fortunato had been drinking. Fortunato was already drunk before they left to find the amontillado, and Montresor gets him to drink more on the way. Everyone knows that wine and alcohol inhibits a person’s thinking abilities, and Fortunato may have been too drunk to realize that Montresor would keep the amontillado near the front of the vaults. “The Cask of Amontillado” has a role reversal between the main characters. Montresor, the murderer and the man in power, “considers himself a persecuted, social nonentity”(Gargano 121). Fortunato is at the mercy of Montresor. “Fortunato, normally an affluent and commanding man, dwindles into pitiful dupe,” says Gargano (121). This role reversal could symbolize what will happen after Fortunato’s death. Montresor will move back into a position of power. The reader knows that he was once a powerful man because Montresor states, “You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy as once I was”(150). There is a “theory of perversity.” J. Rea explains, “A part of Poe’s theory of perversity is that we want to hurt or kill or to bury alive someone because he has been good to us. It is an unbelievable desire”(59). Since this is such an unbelievable theory any normal man would not agree with this, which is what Montresor does. He does not realize that he is being affected by this theory, therefore he does not admit to it and says he is killing for revenge. On the other hand, if Montresor does realize he is being affected by Redd 6 perversity, all Montresor needs to do is looks inside Fortunato to lure him down into the vaults. J. Rea also states, “Montresor looks inside himself and sees perversity and then plays, or tries to play, on the perversity that he suspects is in the other person because it is in him”(62)....
