Poe’s overall tone in The Cask of Amontillado is unsettling and ominous. He uses irony and chilling humor to create a feeling of uneasiness in the audience. The lack of a reliable narrator and exposition to explain the revenge or the characters’ motivations creates sinister undertones—almost as if the audience is missing out on major parts of the story.
Poe uses a stylistic principle in this paragraph by having the most important words come at the end of sentences. Note how each word adds to the power of the line, the prose, and to the overall mood and tone of the piece.
"progress arrested by the rock..."See in text(The Cask of Amontillado)
This means that Fortunato had come to end of the recess in the granite wall. He had expected to find the Amontillado but had only found the granite wall of the remotest side of the catacombs. The use of "arrested" adds to the ominous mood because of the associations it has with jail and entrapment.
