To Build A Fire Character Analysis

The following sample essay on To Build A Fire Character Analysis. Mentors never explains what exactly Fortunate did to him, but considering how they interact with one another at the start of he story, it is very possible Poe knew about how real killers through history have been mentally disturbed in a way that warps how they view reality, such as taking great offence from something any other person may not even notice, as if someone forgot to say “bless you” after another person sneezed.

Whatever the insult Mentors feels has been given to him by Fortunate, he explains that this time, he will get revenge.

Mentors meets with Fortunate at some sort of social event. Fortunate appears to be very intoxicated. He tells he readers that Fortunate is dressed as a jester, in a striped outfit and a jester hat with bells. Fortunate greets Mentors ‘with great warmth’, that Mentors only feigns to return. Mentors then entices Fortunate to come to his home to see the barrel of Amontillado wine that he has acquired.

Fortunate agrees and the two of them venture to Mentor’s large home, where he informs us that the servants just happen to be out tonight, and they II be completely alone.

When they arrive, they descend into some sort Of crypt-like underground passage beneath the house. When they reach the end of the long subterranean crypt, they find a recessed area, about four feet deep, three feet wide, and seven feet high. Fortunate continues into this area with Mentors persuading the drunk to follow him into the smaller space.

Get quality help now

Prof. Finch

Verified

Proficient in: Character

4.7 (346)

“ This writer never make an mistake for me always deliver long before due date. Am telling you man this writer is absolutely the best. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Fortunate is in fact so drunk that he is confused as Mentors chains him down to the floor of this small area. Fortunate is still asking for the Amontillado wine while Mentors brings in building supplies.

Once Mentors starts building a wall at the entrance of this little area, Fortunate seems to sober up quickly. Mentors describes the sounds he hears as he builds, the jingling of Fortunate bells and the clanking of the chains. He is absolutely lost in the pleasure he seemingly has in this act of murder. Once the wall is about half-way up, Fortunate begins to panic and starts to scream, but Mentors simply teases him. Fortunate calms himself down a bit and tries to tell himself that this must be some kind of joke.

Mentors cruelly humors him for a moment, also seeming to take pleasure in playing with Fortunate hope, another sign of a mentally disturbed killer. Soon Fortunate alkalizes it’s not a joke. He begs Mentors to spare him, and Mentors only responds by repeating his begging in a mocking manner. Suddenly, Mentors no longer hears Fortunate pleading. In yet another sign of a demented mind, Mentors feels the thirst for his victim’s anguished cries, and so he calls out to Fortunate, trying to get a response out of him. Fortunate does not respond. In hopes of getting Fortunate to respond in some way, Mentors throws a torch into the only open area left. He hears the tinkling of bells.

He says his ‘heart grew sick’ but only on the ;account of he dampness of the catacombs,’ and he finishes building the wall. Then he says the events happened fifty years ago before his recounting of this story. During this recount, which is the story itself, not once does Mentors show any hint of remorse or reconsideration of his act. If anything, Mentors is exceedingly proud of his perfect murder. This last bit of information utterly concludes that Mentors is some variation of a psychopath. Knowing this, it is very possible that poor Fortunate did not do anything at all to invoke Mentors wrath, aside from simply catching his attention. Mentors oldest very well chosen to kill Fortunate prior to hiding his body in the crypt wall, but instead Mentors choose the slowest and most painful method of murder he could come up with, simply because he wanted to feel his victim suffer.

More often than not, a villain that is “bad simply because he is mad or evil” does not hold up to a deep character. Here however, Poe clearly shows that Mentors wasn’t some simple man whom just decided to get rid of someone that bothered him one day. Instead, Poe shows us that Mentors was clearly an unstable person with a warped view on reality, feeling that his actions were completely justifiable, or flat out irrelevant. Mentors could even be pitied by the reader when we consider he may have had a mental illness that he simply couldn’t cure. This doesn’t justify his monstrous actions of course, but its things like these that make Mentors a well-written and complex character.