Question

In the short story The Cask of Amontillago, how did Montressor employ reverse psycology with his servants and with Fortunato

Answer 1

Before explaining about the answer to this question, it is important to understand what is reverse psychology. Reverse psychology is nothing but the act of fooling someone by making them do something in our interest by telling them not to.

In the short story The Cask of Amontillago, Montresor uses this trick two times. At first, he insists Fortunato that he will put someone else to look out for the Amontillado wine cask if he doesn’t. By doing this he was actually grabing the attention of Fortunato towards the wine. The second time is when he put emphasis on his health condition and cough and asking him to leave by saying that he is a man to be missed. By saying that this he was influencing Fortunato to pretend that he is fine and stay there untill the wine works.

Montresor asks the servant not to leave the house because he will not come back before morning. He said this specifically because he knew as soon as the servants will saw him leaving, they will escape and he will find his house empty just like he wanted.