Poes use of color imagery is central to his questioning of Montresors motives. His face covered in a black silk mask, Montresor represents not blind justice but rather itΒs the Gothic opposite: biased revenge. In contrast, Fortunato dons the motley-colored costume of the court fool, who gets literally and tragically fooled by Montresors masked motives. The color schemes here represent the irony of Fortunatos death sentence. Fortunato, Italian for the fortunate one, faces the realization that even the carnival season can be murderously serious. Montresor chooses the setting of the carnival for its abandonment of social order. While the carnival usually indicates joyful social interaction, Montresor distorts its merry abandon, turning the carnival on its head. The repeated allusions to the bones of Montresors family that line the vaults foreshadow the storys descent into the underworld. The two mens underground travels are a metaphor for their trip to hell. Because the carnival, in the land of the living, does not occur, as Montreso
r wants it to, he takes the carnival below ground, to the realm of the dead and the satanic.
To build suspense in the story, Poe often employs foreshadowing. For example, when Fortunato says, I shall not die of a cough, Montresor replies, True, because he knows that Fortunato will in fact die from dehydration and starvation in the crypt. Montresors description of his familys coat of arms also foreshadows future events. The shield features a human foot crushing a tenacious serpent. In this image, the foot represents Montresor and the serpent represents Fortunato. Although Fortunato has hurt Montresor with biting insults, Montresor will ultimately crush him. The conversation about Masons also foreshadows Fortunatos demise. Fortunato challenges Montresors claim that he is a member of the Masonic order, and Montresor replies insidiously with a visual pun. When he declares that he is a mason by showing his trowel, he means that he is a literal stonemasonthat is, that he constructs things out of stones and mortar, namely Fortunatos grave.