Reader-Response to The Masque of the Red Death
Some major concepts of reader-response criticism, as discussed by Ross Murfin in The Scarlet Letter: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, are these: (1) reading is a temporal process in which the reader lives through the experience of the text and (2) the experience that the reader undergoes may mirror the subject of the story. One reader's experience of "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe can exemplify these two concepts.
In one sense, the temporal process of experiencing this story is like that experienced in reading any story. There is nothing remarkable about the fact that we are in suspense throughout the story, led through the action, ignorant as the characters are of the outcome. We experience what happens to the revelers in Prince Prospero's palace just as they experience it. We know of the threat of the Red Death--as they know it, from the very beginning; we are led through the palace, gaudy room by fantastic turning, as if we were there; we see the masked figure and are no more cognizant of what is behind the mask than the story's characters are.
Yet the extent to which our temporal process is reflected by the story and that our actions in reading it are related to the subject of the story goes even deeper. Certain oddities and gaps in the text bring our reading process closer to the center of the story. First are some puzzling incongruities, like that Prince Prospero is "sagacious" but abandons his dominions when they were "half-depopulated," hardly sagacious in the ordinary sense of the term as it might be used for a ruler. Another is the strange recurrence of the tolling of the ebony clock--a tolling which we ...
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...he Red Death, was, in fact, in their midst. By identification, as we actively seek our own meaning for what is behind the mask, what we find is guided to some extent by what the characters find--Red Death. Not only does the ebony clock toll for us, but the Red Death disrupts our revelry in the barbaric splendor of the story/palace.
Sources Cited:
Murfin, Ross C. "What is Reader-Response Criticism?" The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. Boston: Bedford, 1991. 252-260.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Masque of the Red Death." The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. 9th ed. vol. 1. New York: McGraw, 1998. 1281--1285. 2 vols.
http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/masque/
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/poe852-des-.html
Authors use various styles to tell their stories in order to appeal to the masses exceptionally well and pass the message across. These messages can be communicated through short stories, novels, poems, songs and other forms of literature. Through The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven, it is incredibly easy to get an understanding of Edgar Allen Poe as an author. Both works describe events that are melodramatic, evil and strange. It is also pertinent to appreciate the fact that strange plots and eerie atmospheres are considerably evident in the author’s writings. This paper compares and contrasts The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven and proves that the fear of uncertainty and death informs Edgar Allen Poe’s writings in the two works
6. Murfin, Ross C. "What is Reader-Response Criticism?" in The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Bedford, 1991.
The characters in “The Mask of the Red Death” include Prince Prospero (who is the only person that speaks in the story), a multitude (a thousand) of the Prince’s wealthy friends, and the masked figure, which doesn’t appear until the end of the story. Prince Prospero’s name signifies happiness and good-fortune. Ironically, this is not the tone of the story. The prince is an unusual man with strange tastes. “His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster". After half of his dominions were killed by the disease is...
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death” Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. ED. Edgar V Roberts and Robert Zweig. Boston, Longman: 2012. 516-519.
In the short story “ The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to express ideas to develop his theme and characters. “ The Masque of the Red Death” tells a story of prince Prospero who locks his friends and himself in a castle to escape the Red Death, a deadly disease. Much to Prospero’s dismay, in the end, the deadly disease causes them to perish. Poe uses the dark room to reveal Prospero’s unusual character and reveal that death is always there and cannot be avoided.
In the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar uses many examples of symbolism and imagery throughout the story that helps the reader understand the story more and gives the reader an image in their head. This story is about a Prince, Prince Prospero and many men and women in his country that are hiding in his castle from the plague. Then something unexpected happens after the echoes from the clock disappears into the silence. The clock is a very important piece of imagery in this story. Every time the clock struck, it told how many minutes or hours all the humans of royalty had to live, but unfortunately they didn't know that. “But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell
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and the Red Death to reveal the true character of Prince Prospero, to suggest the
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Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading & Reacting & Writing. 4th ed. Boston: Earl McPeek, 2000. 388-423.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for his masterful writing on all aspects of mortality, but his famous short story “The Masque of the Red Death” proves to be more than a simple story about death. While it is about death, Poe’s short story can be read and applied as a cautionary tale whose purpose is to illustrate a worthy way to live and die by portraying the opposite of both. This interpretation comes about when the story is viewed through the lens of New Criticism. This viewpoint shows how the story uses its formal elements converge to create one complex theme. Poe’s short story develops its theme through the use of paradox, tension, irony and ambiguity, all of which come together to identify