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Marisabel Laird Ortiz Dynamics of Victims and Victimizers in Edgar Allan Poe´s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” The word victim has the uncanny capacity of invoking a myriad of reactions. A victim is oppressed, suppressed, and abused, left without any agency. Dictionaries such as Merriam Webster, Cambridge, and Oxford define a victim as someone or something who suffers or is damaged by external forces. These dictionaries proceed to illustrate a variety of ways in which subjects become victims. However, the word victimizer is not defined in any of them. It is simply known as the perpetrator of victimization. Why fail to define the inflictor as clearly as the afflicted? According to David Rieff (30), people generally have an extremely “romantic” view” of themselves, so they would much rather relate to the victim rather than the victimizer. A victim is defenseless, and therefore redeemable and deserving of all compassion; whereas the victimizer is vile, nefarious, repulsive, and inhumane. Rieff explains that human beings are uncomfortable by “how rapidly a victim becomes a victimizer, and a victimizer a victim.” Edgar Allan Poe explores these varied dimensions in the victim and victimizer binary in the stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death”. Even when there appears to be one clear victim and victimizer in each of these tales, the dynamics of victimization are diverse and intricate. In the first lines of “The Cask of Amontillado” the reader encounters a narrator that asserts his transition from victim to victimizer. “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” (1612). In this first utterance, the narrator, Montresor, does not give any clear indication of the gravity of victimization he suffered at the hand of Fortunato. However, the abrupt change Montresor
undergoes in which he assumed the role of victimizer could be explained by the process called trauma learning. Montresor’s revenge might constitute a reenactment, repetition, or even a displacement of traumatic experiences perpetrated by Fortunato, which would suggest that trauma was still ongoing in the narrator’s psyche (Burguess 9). The narrator’s revenge was acquired through a process of repetition. First, Montresor customized his revenge to exploit Fortunato’s weaknesses: his arrogance and bacchanalian tendencies. Then, Montresor was able to carry out his plan and avoid any suspicion through repeated actions. The narrator told his friend Fortunato that he bought a cask of Amontillado (Spanish sherry), but was not certain of its authenticity. Montresor repeated that he had his doubts twice when explaining this situation, with the possible purpose of inducing Fortunato’s inclination to help. Afterwards, Montresor told Fortunato that he would ask for Luchresi’s help to authenticate the sherry because the barrel was located in his humid family catacomb and Fortunato was suffering from a severe cold. For a mediocre connoisseur to replace him was an affront to Fortunato, which explains why he practically forced Montresor into the catacombs without questioning why the cask of Amontillado would be stored in a place in which components such as niter and humidity could compromise the quality of the liquor. As they traveled deeper into the catacombs, Montresor repeatedly asked Fortunato to return, to seek Luchresi’s assistance, feigning concern for his deteriorating health. This repetition had its desired effect, which was to motivate Fortunato to move forward without any suspicion. The final repetition was Montresor’s constant administration of wine to dull Fortunato’s senses under the pretense of medicinal purposes. These specific and calculative actions compromise the reader’s “ability to distinguish between victim and offender” (Burguess
victimizer: powerful, cunning, and in control. However, he is never free from being a victim to his trauma, just like the golden foot stepping on a serpent, but being bitten by it. Another perspective could be that Fortunato symbolizes Montresor’s own neurosis, which he wants to enclose and expunge (Engel 28). The trauma inflicted on Montresor by Fortunato could have been either the result or the trigger of the neurosis. Montresor revels in inflicting pain on Fortunato, but there are instances in the story in which he was “momentary flashes of panic which almost disrupt his revenge” (Engel 28). He thinks that by entombing Fortunato his own neurosis would be eradicated and he would feel liberated and regain his sanity. Even when the crime is carried out successfully, the revenge is not. Montresor was not able to be free of his personal victimization, which made him obsessed every day since he committed the murder (Engel 29). Perhaps he narrates the story to free himself from guilt in a final attempt to rest in peace, as suggested in the last line of the story ‘In pace requiescat!’ (1616). In “The Masque of the Red Death”, the dynamic of victim and victimizer is more peculiar due to its supernatural component. The victims were the people who were dying en masse because of the Red Death, which is Poe’s interpretation of death personified. Unlike the Grim Reaper, who severs the soul from the body and transports it to the afterlife without having any control over how the victim dies, the Red Death is both inflictor of an illness and collector of souls. The Red Death is the victimizer, initially unbiased in his collection of victims. But as the story develops, the Red Death shifts into an active agent that targets a group of escapees. The main conflict of this story is that Prince Prospero gathered a group of friends in his fortified abbey to escape the Red Death. They used their wealth and status as the noblesse to elude the ultimate victimization. “The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime
it was folly to grieve, or to think” (1585). For five to six months they were living in bacchanalian oblivion, taking pleasure from frivolous parties and other forms of entertainment. Not only were they foolish or arrogant enough to believe that they could outsmart the Red Death, but they also flaunted their airs of superiority. It was during a masquerade that the Red Death appeared amongst the revelers, who thought it was another guest disguised in very poor taste. By the end of the story, all of the people in the abbey died at the hand of the Red Death. Both the exposition and the resolution showcase the characteristics of two massacres. The Red Death unleashed upon the land “indiscriminate, ruthless, and often systematic mass violence” (Kelman 29). Anybody, regardless of age, gender, or social economic status, could fall victim of it. It had a modus operandi : “There were sharp pain, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleedings at the pores, with dissolution” (1585). Its systemized nature established a thirty minute time frame for experiencing these symptoms before the victim was ultimately consumed by the illness. These facts about the Red Death appear to be a fictionalized representation of the Black Death, which terrorized Europe in the 14th^ century. By themselves, they simply represent a violent illness. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the Red Death is a being that behaves with intent and deals with his evaders in a calculated and precise approach. First, there is the seventh room, a symbol of the Red Death with its black furnishing and its red illumination. Nobody was brave enough to enter this room, perhaps because subconsciously they were able to perceive that the Red Death was an imminent threat and the room acted as a reminder. Another indicator that the end was nigh was the ebony clock, the Red Death’s announcer. Each time an hour passed, the clock chimed, and the room was still, the revelers grew frightened and pale, not knowing why. When the clock stopped chiming, they discarded their reaction as folly instead of
In sanctioned massacres carried out by military forces, there are three processes or stages that weaken any moral restraint against violence and enable the victimizers to act without moral repercussions. They are authorization, routinization, and dehumanization. In the stage of authorization, the situation is so specifically defined that the victimizers are free from the responsibility of following standard moral principles. In the stage of routinization, the actions become so organized that there is no opportunity to raise questions on morality. Finally, in the process of dehumanization, the victimizers attitudes toward the target are structured and in motion, which eliminates the necessity and possibility to think about morality (Kelman 38). The Red Death, being a supernatural figure, is above moral principles and does not suffer moral repercussions. Nonetheless, the Red Death follows the same processes of sanctioned massacres. In the stage of authorization, there is specific and blatant disregard against the Red Death on the part of Prince Prospero and his associates. It is carried out for a considerable amount of time, establishing an unequivocal situation for the Red Death to rectify. Next is routinization, which happens at the masquerade ball. The warnings are set in place, the time and manner of appearance are chosen, the resolutions are envisioned. Finally, there is dehumanization, which acquires a different meaning in this tale. At the end, when the revelers are stripped from their life they become dehumanize, their bodies become unanimated objects that lie in the shadows. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories feature characters that assume the roles of victims and victimizers diversely. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Fortunato was initially Montresor’s victimizer, and then became victim to Montresor’s revenge and his own weaknesses. Montresor conveyed the duality of the victim and victimizer binary, illustrating that a human being is
capable of inflicting trauma and being afflicted by trauma simultaneously. “The Masque of the Red Death” depicts how a supernatural entity could constitute a victimizer whose affliction is impossible to escape. Both stories highlight the complex, and sometimes dark nature of humanity to the point where the reader may feel conflicted. On one hand some try to justify or ameliorate Montresor’s actions by pointing out that his obsession is a sign of a mental illness brought forth by trauma, but on the other many condemn him for killing a man with very little explanation and not being strong enough to overcome his nefarious obsession. In any case, it is distressing for the reader to see how quickly and easily a victim can turn into a victimizer, and a victimizer into a victim with little or no justification. It is also uncomfortable to ponder on how mortality renders humanity a victim, and nature is the inescapable victimizer. Humanity constantly attempts to foil death, bringing forth their own destruction. Edgar Allan Poe’s insightful stories epitomize the dimensions of the human psyche, which seems to be the victim nature and nurture and victimizer of actions and behavior. Works Cited Burgess, Ann W,R.N., D.N.Sc, et al. "Drawing a Connection from Victim to Victimizer."
