Trusting Narrator?

How do you know if you can trust a person? People usually judge a person first by their looks and then by their personality. Another important factor is the impression that the person first makes. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado”, the narrator of the story is Montresor. The first line of the story is “The thousands injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” (127). The story starts off with Montresor vowing revenge against Fortunato. Okay, so the first impression that you get of Montresor is that he is a person who is out to get revenge. A little more into the story Montresor says, “I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation” (127). Here you get the idea that Montresor is a deceiving person. Throughout the story Montresor deceives Fortunato into following him by mocking him. He mocks Fortunato by comparing him to Luchresi, whom he knows will get on Fortunato’s nerve. Montresor does narrates through the whole story and tells how he got Fortunato drunk and trapped him, but he also comes off as a very deceptive person. He may even come off as a lunatic. It seems that Montresor was always ridiculing Fortunato until the last moment, “But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient” (131). Montresor was communicating with Fortunato until the very end. He even became a little agitated when Fortunato did not answer him. So I think that Montresor is an untrusting narrator because he comes off to conniving. After all the whole story is about how he tricked Fortunato into his death.