Compare and Contrast Essay: A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Edgar Allen Poe vs. The Cask of Amontillado by Flannery O’Connor

In the stories The Cask of Amontillado and A Good Man is Hard to Find, the authors make use of character development to achieve a firm and graduating sense of suspense. A Good Man is Hard to Find is more reliant on this method and does so more artfully.

Much like O’Connor’s use of descriptive writing in A Good Man is Hard to Find, Poe does so well and artfully, however instead of in the form of character development, he does so majorly in atmosphere. As Montresor and Fortunato began to travel into Montresor’s vaults, they noticed that “The earth which formed the floor was cold and hard. We were entering the last resting place of the dead of the Montresor family. Here too we kept our finest wines, here in the cool, dark, still air under the ground.” (Poe 70) Poe’s description of the atmosphere mimics the tone of his musings in the very beginning of the story--cold and unforgiving in his plot of murder for pride. The reader is reminded of this, and so feels the situation become even more dire for Fortunato. As Fortunato traveled into his own undoing, “...deeper and deeper into the earth...we arrived at a vault in which the air was so old and heavy that our lights almost died.” (Poe 71) This is when the reader knows without a whisper of doubt that this is the time when Fortunato is to die; the foreboding was building, and this is the atmosphere it culminated to. 

Unlike Poe’s work in The Cask of Amontillado, O’Connor’s use of suspense is mainly based in character descriptions and development, whereas Poe’s is founded in use of atmosphere. The grandmother occupied herself in the car with her grandchildren and the children’s mother. O’Connor used the internal nitpicking so proficient in the grandmother’s character to preface her motives and description. “Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she has pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” (O’Connor 35) While the grandmother is established as a very proprietary woman who prides herself on material possessions, her internal musings are even more disturbing. O’Connor’s use of the grandmother’s perspective causes the reader a sense of unease which only builds throughout the story, as the reader witnesses the grandmother’s extreme perspective. Later on in the story, after having met Red Sam and his wife, the children ran outside and were for a moment entranced by the sight of a monkey in a tree. The monkey had also been seen when they’d first arrived. “He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.” (O’Connor 38) O’Connor’s depiction of the monkey’s filth, when already it was chained to a tree, is extremely abnormal and so makes the reader feel more on their toes, unknowing of what is to come.

While both stories are congruous in their uses of description, they do so in differing ways. While The Cask of Amontillado uses atmosphere, A Good Man is Hard to Find uses character development. Both leave readers in the grips of apprehension as the plots unfold, however atmosphere is much less subtle. It requires less clarification, and so it is of no doubt that atmosphere is more impactful than character development when viewed in small amounts by the average, unassuming reader.