I don't know why, but I have always thought that the narrator, son and heir of the ancient Montresors, was somehow sensitively gay. I have no literary proof. Maybe I just want him to be. It is that sensitivity (like drag queen scale sensitivity, sooo haughty) that makes me read it this way. God knows what unconsciously stupid insult by Fortunato was laid upon Montresor's character. Probably it was some sloppy and off-handed remark or an opinion on vintages. Whatever was said, it cut to the bone and ensured Fortunato's lonely end. Nemo me impune lacessit.
Maybe it is Montresor's educated and cultured authorial voice, as a man of taste, that leads me to think this way. If that is the case, then I am a snob for identifying with his cruelty. I suppose I shouldn't be so upset with myself, it is only a story.
Hear it here, narrated expertly by VonClegg Classics ..
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The Masque of the Red Death: MotRD
2 comments:
This was a Hammer Film? A Vincent Price film? I think I remember seeing it in glorious color in one of my high school lit classes - instead of teaching? Play a film. In those days it was the big reels and it would be shipped in and mailed back. I remember those catalogs and dreaming of doing such a thing. Had I money as a child, I would have opened my own movie theatre. Anyway... I adore this story and agree with you about the narrator. Poe himself was very 'sensitive'. Kizzes.
There are a whole series of Roger Corman films based on Poe's stories. Love them, even the comedic ones. I used to sit as far away from the projector as possible so I wouldn't be disturbed by the noisy mechanics of those old machines, yes! I recall the big octagonal packets that held the reels to be shipped back!
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