Short Stories About Betrayal: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about betrayal, from The Cask of Amontillado and Boule de Suif to The Lagoon and In a Grove, summarised and compared for readers and writers.
Betrayal is the plot readers feel in the body, because everyone has been on one side of it. The stories here cover the full range: a friend walled up, a woman abandoned by the passengers she fed, a brother left on a riverbank, a wife whose version of events cannot be reconciled with anyone else's.
The collection begins with betrayals between friends, moves through lovers and families, and ends with a story in which the betrayal itself is unrecoverable because every witness lies. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. Montresor greets his friend Fortunato at carnival with every sign of warmth and leads him down into the family vaults on the pretext of judging a wine. He has already sent the servants away.
The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde. The Miller calls little Hans his best friend, fills his own barrow from Hans's garden, and sends him out in a storm to fetch a doctor. At the funeral the Miller complains about being left with a wheelbarrow he cannot get rid of.
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton. Two old friends, widows now, sit above the Forum and circle a night decades earlier when one of them wrote a letter in a man's name to send the other out into the cold. The reply to that letter is the story's last line.
Bliss by Katherine Mansfield. Bertha Young, glowing through her own dinner party, feels a wordless bond with the silvery Miss Fulton as they stand at the window looking at the pear tree. In the hall afterwards she sees who Miss Fulton's bond is really with.
Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant. A prostitute in a coach of respectable refugees shares her hamper with them when they are hungry, and they, in turn, argue her into a Prussian officer's bed so the coach may leave. Next morning nobody offers her so much as bread.
The Lagoon by Joseph Conrad. Arsat tells a white trader how he and his brother stole Diamelen from a rajah's household and fled by canoe, and how, when pursuers caught up on the beach, his brother turned to fight and called his name. Arsat kept paddling.
The Brazilian Cat by Arthur Conan Doyle. Marshall King, broke and hopeful, visits a rich cousin in Suffolk who keeps an enormous puma in a cage and is unusually eager to show it off after dark. The cage has a sliding partition.
The False Gems by Guy de Maupassant. Monsieur Lantin's wife, a model of virtue, indulged one harmless taste for imitation jewellery. After her death he takes a paste necklace to a jeweller and learns what it is worth.
Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin. Armand Aubigny, who married a foundling for love, turns from her and their child when the baby's features begin to speak of a heritage he cannot accept. He burns her letters in a bonfire on the lawn, and finds one of his mother's.
In a Grove by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. A samurai lies dead in a bamboo grove, and a woodcutter, a priest, a policeman, an old woman, a bandit, the widow and the dead man himself each give testimony. Someone in the grove betrayed someone, and every account names a different traitor.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that betrayal lives in the gap between a word and an act. Wilde's Miller and Poe's Montresor both call their victim a friend; Maupassant's passengers praise a woman's patriotism before selling her; Arsat's brother says his name once. The stories that hurt most are the ones where the betrayed never learns, Lantin and Bertha Young and Hans, and the reader carries the knowledge instead.
In a Grove is the collection's coda because it removes the ground the others stand on: three people in a grove, all betrayed, and no version of events that lets the reader assign the blame.
If you want to write about betrayal
What writers can take from this
- Read The Devoted Friend before The Cask of Amontillado; the fable makes the horror story easier to see.
- Bliss and Roman Fever both hinge on a single line in the last paragraph; read the last page of each twice.
- Boule de Suif and The Lagoon are the longest here, and both are about a group that lets one person pay.
- The Brazilian Cat is a thriller; note how much Doyle tells you about the cousin before the cage.
- In a Grove is the source of the film Rashomon; read it before the film if you can.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a character is betrayed by someone they thank, sincerely, in the final scene, and the reader knows what the character does not.
Questions
What is the best short story about betrayal?
The Cask of Amontillado is the most famous, and Boule de Suif the most complete. In a Grove is the one that changed how writers think about testimony.
Which short stories about betrayal are good for students?
The Devoted Friend, The Cask of Amontillado, Desiree's Baby and The Lagoon are short and clearly built. In a Grove is excellent for teaching unreliable narration.
Which classic story about betrayal is the shortest?
Desiree's Baby, at about two thousand words. The Cask of Amontillado is a little longer, and The False Gems about the same.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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