Short Stories About Revenge: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about revenge, from The Cask of Amontillado and A Vendetta to Sredni Vashtar and The Shot, summarised and compared for readers and writers.
Revenge is the oldest plot there is, and the short story suits it because revenge is a single act with a long fuse. Readers come to these stories for the fuse: the years of waiting, the training of a dog, the shot saved for a decade.
The collection begins with the patient avengers, moves through the children and the curses, and ends with a man who has his enemy in his sights and does something stranger than shooting. 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 has decided to punish Fortunato for an insult he never specifies, and does it during carnival, in his family vaults, with a smile. He brings a trowel and lets his victim's jester's bells do the last talking.
A Vendetta by Guy de Maupassant. In Bonifacio a widow's only son is stabbed by a man who escapes across the strait to Sardinia, and the old woman has no one left to avenge him but herself and a dog. She starves the dog and dresses a straw dummy in her son's clothes.
Hop-Frog by Edgar Allan Poe. A crippled jester, forced to drink by a king who enjoys his suffering, proposes a masquerade in which the king and his ministers dress as chained orangutans in tar and flax. Watch the chandelier hook.
The Interlopers by Saki. Two neighbours whose families have fought over a strip of forest for three generations meet alone in it at night, each hoping to catch the other. A tree settles the matter first.
Sredni Vashtar by Saki. Conradin, a sickly boy under the thumb of his cousin and guardian, keeps a polecat-ferret in the tool shed and worships it as a god. When his guardian goes out to the shed to see what he has been hiding, he sits at the window and waits.
The Five Orange Pips by Arthur Conan Doyle. Three men in one family receive envelopes of dried orange pips and die within weeks, and the last of them comes to Baker Street in the rain. Holmes traces the letters to an American society and a ship called the Lone Star.
The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy. Rhoda Brook, discarded by Farmer Lodge with a son to raise, dreams that his young bride sits on her chest, and grips the woman's arm to throw her off. The bride wakes with marks on her arm that never heal.
The Hand by Guy de Maupassant. A magistrate recalls an Englishman in Ajaccio who kept a severed, dried hand chained to his wall and said it belonged to his best enemy. One morning the Englishman is found strangled and the chain hangs empty.
Casting the Runes by M. R. James. An alchemist whose book was savaged by a critic has a way with critics: a slip of paper with runic writing, passed by hand. Dunning finds his tram advertisement replaced by a notice about a man who died.
The Shot by Alexander Pushkin. Silvio, a duellist who never misses, walked away from a duel years ago with his shot unfired and has waited since for the right moment. He arrives when his enemy is newly married and makes him fire first, at a painting.
Reading them together
The collection argues that revenge stories are really about time. Montresor's insult is in the past and never explained; the widow's son is dead before the story begins; Silvio has spent years keeping himself worthy of a single shot. What the writers vary is who pays: Poe lets the avenger walk free, Hardy lets the wrong woman suffer, Saki lets a tree and a ferret do the judging.
Set A Vendetta beside Sredni Vashtar. In both a small dependent creature is trained, or prayed to, until it does what its master cannot, and in both the human calmly sits down afterwards to eat.
If you want to write about revenge
What writers can take from this
- Start with The Cask of Amontillado; every other story here argues with its ending.
- Read A Vendetta and The Hand together for Maupassant in Corsica, one story realist and one uncanny.
- Saki's two stories are the most fun and the cruellest; read them aloud.
- In The Shot, note how Pushkin tells the story twice, once from each side of the duel.
- The Withered Arm is long and slow; its power is in the last chapter, so do not skim the middle.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a character prepares for years to take revenge, and on the day, with everything in place, discovers the thing they actually wanted was not the act itself.
Questions
What is the best short story about revenge?
The Cask of Amontillado is the standard, and probably the most perfectly built. A Vendetta and The Shot are the ones writers cite for structure.
Which short stories about revenge are good for students?
The Cask of Amontillado, The Interlopers and Sredni Vashtar are short and constantly taught. The Five Orange Pips works well as an introduction to detective plotting.
Which classic revenge story is the shortest?
Sredni Vashtar and The Interlopers are each under two thousand words. A Vendetta is about the same length.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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