Cask of Amontillado - Thousand Injuries?

I’ve read somewhere that Edgar Allan Poe wrote the story as a diss for his rival Thomas Dunn English and Poe even sued English for libel. So I’m guessing the “thousand injuries” is an allegory for Poe’s own “injuries” from English’s libel.

Welcome to Fluther.

My own impression from reading this is that the “thousand injuries” was a hyperbolic way of saying “I just don’t like this guy”, and that leads to a “justification” for such a heinous murder. Obviously, the character committing this awful crime is unhinged, and the “thousand injuries” is reflective of that. The actual “injuries”, insults, slights, rivalries, etc. may have existed only in the character’s mind.

At the time of the writing, even though duels were outlawed, a duel would have been the normal way to settle a single grievous injury, such as a public insult, for example. Poe’s character has to justify this particularly vicious way to dispatch his rival – at least in the character’s own mind, so the reader can fathom why the following events would occur – to have the story make sense. Because without “a thousand injuries” (or at least the character’s presumption of “so much wrong done to me”), it’s just a story of a monstrous crime with no basis.

I don’t think it matters one bit. As @CWOTUS says, it’s necessary to supply some sort of motive. There’s a hint early on that Fortunato might have been a con man and that Montresor might have suffered losses at his hands.

But the particulars are irrelevant to the story; it’s not as if we were going to evaluate the pretext and decide if Montresor’s revenge is justified. That would just be a distraction. For all we know, those injuries are imaginary. What’s relevant is Montresor’s perception of them.

To add to what others have said, I have always interpreted “a thousand injuries” as insults or humiliating moments, as if Fortunato enjoyed embarrassing Montresor and using him as the butt of jokes.

I am with @CWOTUS

It is a way of justifying Montresor’s quest for revenge without wasting a lot of print space going into details. I am familiar with the works of Poe, but not so familiar with his relationship with his readership. My understanding is that many of his works were published in periodicals. There would have been a limitation in print space. It would have been impractical, both in print space and readers attention span, to go into great detail about what Fortunato had done.

Suffice it say simply that Montresor was pissed off beyond redemption.

Woa! You’ve raised a question I’ve never thought of before!

I didn’t pay attention to that detail maybe because I thought it was just some kind of motive Montresor gave to explain his action (like most people here have pointed out), though sometimes when I read the story again I have a feeling that the motive doesn’t really conform to the action.