Setting is described as the time, place, and social context within which a narrative occurs. Setting is used for a reason, and every story has some kind of context that serves a definite purpose. In Edgar Allen Poe's short story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe uses settings to heighten probability, create atmosphere, and to communicate ideas symbolically.
Poe uses setting to heighten the probability of certain actions to occur during the story. When the character, Montresor, first sees his fellow character, Fortunato, Fortunato was wearing “a tight-fitting parti-striped dress”(4). If the setting was not previously described as a carnival, then the reader would have been less likely to believe that Fortunato was wearing such a silly outfit. In the second part of the story, the two characters described the cellar they were passing through as “a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame”(67). When Montresor finally gets to burying Fortunato alive, Poe has already been foreshadowing something eerie happening by using this eerie atmosphere. Poe uses these two settings in order to make his character's actions more believable to the reader, and as a result the reader finds the story more enjoyable.
