That's a tricky one. Personally, I think Montresor is
clearly an "unreliable narrator" (suggestion: This is a common term used when discussing
literature; Google it and get a good idea what it
means).
Especially unreliable when it comes to Fortunato;
it should be fairly clear that M.s thinking has something wrong with it. More
precisely, I think he misinterprets what's happening in the world, and his own place in
it.
Assuming M reports their conversation accurately, I
don't see anything particularly hateful about F, (your own opinion may differ; read
carefully and decide what you think) but clearly M does. Is he right or wrong? Does he
have a disordered mind that interprets F as hateful, or is he right and merely giving an
accurate report of the situation?
Not to give away any
answers, as I said, I think M's mind is dangerously disordered: you could arguably say
he is murderously insane. (These are very outdated terms; you could look up "paranoia",
"schizophrenia" to get a sense of how M is thought of
today).
The question now is, if M is essentially a crazy
murderer, who likes to torture his victim, is he hateful? Or is he
a victim of his own disorder, more properly to be kept away from harming people, but to
be cared for rather than hated?
The reference I give is for
Wikipedia, which is often suspect as a source of information. However, I think this
article, and the others it refers to, are adequate.
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