“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O' Connor are two intense fictional stories involving murder. These two stories use foreshadowing that suggests to the reader that at least one character will die. Each of these stories has victims and killers. The main characters of “The Barrel of Amontillado” are Fortunato and Montresor. The main characters of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are the grandmother, Bailey, his wife, John Wesley, June Star, the child, the misfit, Bobby Lee and Hiram. There is a deeper meaning to all this predictable doom. The foreshadowing shows predictable doom for at least one character in each of the stories, but it underlies a deeper theme of unjust violence. In "The Barrel of Amontillado", Fortunato is the innocent victim and Montresor is the cold-blooded killer. The story takes place in a cold, dark catacomb. Fortunato thinks he will go to the catacombs with Montresor to see a huge cellar. Montresor manipulates Fortunato since he knows that Fortunato loves to drink wine. In the end he is so drunk that he suspects nothing, even when Montresor grabs a trowel. However, the reader is able to grasp Fortunato's murder in advance as he is sober and able to understand the following warning clues. Montresor tells Fortunato that he will not die of coughing and says he will toast his long life. Both are also extremely ironic and the reader understands that Fortunato will not die of coughing, but of murder, and indeed does not drink of his long life because he is about to kill him, which is ironic. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” there seems to be clear victims and killers, but it's not that simple. The M... in the middle of the card... who will be killed, never accepts her fate. Both “The Cask of Amontillado” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” show different ways of living. foreshadowing, but there is enough of it in both fictional stories for the reader to understand that the murder will happen and not be shocked when someone is killed. However, this may not stop the reader from having intense feelings while reading one of the stories and from mentally screaming at a character to do something else to stay alive. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” also contains irony when the grandmother finds a bond that kills her and her family, when she thought a bond would free them. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O' Connor are two intense fictional stories that involve murder and show a theme of violence by heartless killers.