The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
Published 1846 · 8,250 words · about 1 hour at an average pace
How hard is The Cask of Amontillado to read?
The Cask of Amontillado scores 52 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Some heraldic and wine vocabulary, otherwise plain.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Controlled, formal sentences that stay calm while the horror proceeds.
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Entirely concrete.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Short and spare.
- Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
- Montresor narrates his own crime fifty years on, and never explains the insult that caused it.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- The catacombs, the coat of arms and the trowel do a great deal of quiet work.
- Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
- Almost every line Montresor speaks to Fortunato means its opposite; the dramatic irony is total.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- The deed is completed, but the motive never is.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- A single linear account.
How The Cask of Amontillado is regarded
The Cask of Amontillado holds a literary regard score of 91 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.