"The Cask of Amontillado"

This has always been one of my favorite Poe stories, mostly because of my 10th grade English teacher. On the weekends, he did dramatic readings in the local theatre, and around Halloween, he did a one-man dramatic re-enactment of "The Cask of Amontillado". I took this as my inspiration for how I would teach this. I would give students the text and randomly select 2 students to play Montresor and Fortunato. Then, I would step back, and tell the readers that their job is to narrate and try to have Montresor and Fortunato act out, with the readers giving lines and tones in which lines are said, along with actions. This could have the possibility to bring the text to life for students, and give them a feel for how things actually went in the text. It could give them the ability to understand the irony present through the text, and how the characters interact. It could give students the ability to own their own learning and interact with each other and the text.
Students, after using this technique, can easily the conduct discussions about how certain literary elements (irony, foreshadowing) help character development in context of the story. Students can then create their own predictions about what actually happened to Montresor for him to hate Fortunato. This could be a very short unit (less than a week) to teach a lot about literary elements, character development, and predicting. It would be great for Halloween, as a scary/creepy element of literature.

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