The Masque of the Red Death Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Masque of the Red Death” is a twisted story about how no one can outrun death. “The Masque of the Red Death” revolves around a prince who believes he can outrun death. He throws a masquerade ball, but is appalled when a man who appears to be a victim of the Red Death himself appears at his party. In an effort to capture the masked man, he chases the new guest to the black-and-red room. After confronting, Prospero dies along with the red of those locked up in the palace for the Red Death has infiltrated the castle. In portraying this macabre story, Poe’s use of the literary terms imagery, mood, and symbolism help bring the story to life and give the reader a better understanding of the …show more content…
Many consider Prince Prospero’s seven rooms in his palace to be a symbolism of human life. The rooms are set up from East to West, and the colors range from a vivid blue, to purple, green, orange, white, violet and lastly black and scarlet all to represent different stages. Ironic enough, the masqueraders do not go near the black room, for only few of the company are “bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.” (Poe, 86) Thus indicating their fear of death. Also located in the black room is the ebony clock, so it’s almost obvious it is meant to be the symbol of death and the fact that it is inevitable. The clock alerts people to their mortality, and awakens them to reality for “there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company”. (Poe, 86) The revelers could neither stop its pendulum …show more content…
He uses captivating descriptions of these dreams that “writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps.” (Poe, 87) Poe’s description of writhing dreams seems to suggest the whole scene was almost like a product of a twisted imagination. The reader can vividly picture the dizzying scene as if it’s one gigantic sickening dream, with “much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.” (Poe, 86) Poe discusses here more of the masquerade floor, and it gives the reader a sense of awestruck, but also the language Poe uses to describe the scene seems oppressively meaningful, much similar to a dream. Poe’s explicitly descriptive language creates a dream realm for the
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
Edgar Allen Poe, in the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, shows how people may try to outsmart death and surpass it, but in the end they will die since death is inevitable. He reveals this in the book by showing all the people closed up in the abbey that belongs to Prince Prospero. They are trying to escape the “Red Death” and think that they can escape the death by hiding away in the abbey. They manage to stay safe for six months but in the end they all die after the stroke of midnight during the masquerade ball Prince Prospero puts on from the Red Death itself which appears after midnight and leaves no survivors in the end. Poe develops the theme of how no one can escape death through the use of the point of view, the setting, and symbolism.
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
"The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the 'Red Death,'" (209). As Edgar Allen Poe set the scene for his story, he also created an ominous mood and a sense of suspense supported by the setting. He details the fun and amusement inside the prince's abbey, in contrast to the horror and doom outside, and the reader's curiosity is piqued, because such bliss cannot be maintained for long. Throughout the story Poe explicates and changes elaborate environments to build the suspenseful energy and create a strong structure. In "The Masque of the Red Death," setting is employed to organize motives and action, and to focus the reader on the climax. Poe targets the culminating point of his story using rich descriptions of the abbey, the masquerade, and the clock.
Detachment from reality is what the main characters in both Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” express. “The Things They Carried” is the collection of interrelated short stories of Lieutenant Cross and his experiences throughout the Vietnam War. “The Masque of the Red Death” is the story of a prince who fears the “Red Death” who hides himself, along with some townspeople, to escape from the terrible disease. Each character, despite having two very different roles in their lives, have to face reality. In order to fully understand the relationship between these two works, each of these factors in turn.
I chose to write about the comparison of two of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. The two stories that I chose to write about are “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Both of these stories create and have a gothic mood to them, which draws you in as a reader. The story of the masque of the red death is written about the black plague that was spreading across Europe at the time, and the story of the fall of the house of usher is written about a sickness or a disease that affects the characters of the story. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the “The Masque of the Red Death “, it is narrated by an unknown onlooker within the castle itself. In both stories with the narrator being an onlooker or as an unnamed friend as in “The fall of the House of Usher” forces or draws the reader to feel a part of the story itself. “The Masque of the Red Death” is about a prince who is rich that invites a thousand of his close knights and people of nobility to his castle where he has it sealed up to keep the plague from reaching his guest and his self. Edgar Allan Poe made the rooms of the castle in this story to be bazaar with all seven chambers of the castle different colors that went in one direction from east to west representing a life cycle. The last chamber was colored black with red stained windows that represented the final stage of life or death. The prince and his guest did not dare to enter this chamber because they feared death and were terrified of the idea of it (2012). In this story the prince and his guest think that they are safe and have a masque ball, while at the party they drink and are having a good time not thinking of the plague that is ravishing the country around them nor the poor that are being stric...
Everyone fears their own death, thus why some people will do anything to escape it. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, this fear is experienced by all. In the story, a prince named Prospero and his people try to elude the Red Death through seclusion and isolation in the prince's abbey. However, no walls can stop death since it is unavoidable and inescapable. Throughout the story, Poe uses symbols such as the rooms, the masked figure, and the clock to convey the theme that no one can escape death.
Throughout the short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses vivid symbolism, structure, and reoccurring details to paint a powerful image regarding the finality and inescapable reaches of death itself. “The ‘Red Death’ has long devastated the country,” yet the Prince Prospero continues to hold extravagant parties for his fellow elite members of society. Rather than merely telling a series of events, Poe carries his readers throughout the many rooms and scenes that hold the Prince’s masquerade, up until the clock strikes midnight and the partygoers can no longer hide behind their façade, and death comes in to take those that thought themselves invincible (Poe 438-442).
Seize him and unmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!” This quote was taken from the mysterious story The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. This story was mainly focused about fate and the ignorance of humanity today. Edgar tells the story about a prince, Prospero, who confines himself in his castle with revellers who are trying to escape the disease that is spreading in their home. However, the castle’s rooms are each a specific color, resembling the phases of a human’s life. The revellers move through the rooms, showing they are aging and becoming closer to the final room which is black, resembling death. At the end of the story, there is a horrendous cloaked figure that symbolizes death, stalking the revellers. After Prospero confronts the mysterious figure, he is slaughtered. “And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.” Soon after Prospero’s ignorant death, the cloaked figure catches up with the revellers, killing them off as well. This storyline written by Poe, shows that he feels that fate cannot be changed, in the end, you will die. His character Prospero and the revelers represented the fact that people believe they can change their fate, escape death, but Poe created a character, the red death, or
In the story, “Masque of the Red Death” it covers six months during the Red Death.It takes place in a castle which has seven different colored rooms.In the beginning of the story it describes the main character prince Prospero as happy,fearless and wise. Towards the end of the story a new guest appears to the party and everyone is scared and Prospero goes from being happy to mad and in the end the new guest kills Prospero and everyone dies because he was the Red Death. The message in this analogy ,”The Masque of the Red Death “ by Poe is life passes by so quick that you don't realize what's going on until it's your time to die.
“And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall” (Poe, par. 14). After the mummer kills Prince Prospero, the masqueraders in the abbey perish one by one until the ebony clock runs out and none remain. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the symbolism of the iron fortress, the masque, and the mummer to reveal the theme that man does not have control over their fate, and they cannot run from death.
Poe’s disheartening life probably was the root of many of his stories. An example of this parallelism is found in the story The Masque of Red Death. After disinherited by his wealthy adoptive father, Edgar struggled financially essentially for the rest of his life. In the story, Prince Prospero, obviously named for being wealthy, constructed an impenetrable fortress for him and his friends to hide in. During that time period, the Plague, or “Red Death” rampaged Europe, killing people in multitudes. Poe describes Prince Prospero’s hiding as such, “There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and the security were within. Without was the ‘Red Death’” (Masque of Red Death 1). Poe’s obvious distaste for the wealthy is represented through this quote. Poe’s obsession with death comes into play in the end of the story, where the “Red Death” enters dressed as a Plague victim, and all inside the castle are killed. Poe mocks the prosperous with the ridiculous things the Prince provided when they were in the castle. By ultimately ending the lives of the prosperous, it gives the reader a look into how Poe feels about the wealthy. This parallelism to Poe’s tragic life allows the reader to see how death has become a theme of Poe’s personal life, not only in the story.
In the Masque of the Red Death, Poe utilizes diction of deception, visual imagery, and archetypes to show that even in full awareness, people did not use their resources to help those in need or in other words one can not escape death; however, Poe also utilizes foreshadowing and irony in order to create a mysterious mood;ominous tone in the story. For example, “the presence of the Red Death had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood bedewed halls…...Poe 5)” This portrays the theme of the short story because it shows the reader that no one is capable of escaping death; moreover, Poe also incorporates his superfluous use of diction and visual imagery in order to give the reader a sense of feeling of how it is like to be held in the hands of the plague that haunts the hallways of Prince Prospero.
Matthews states that a short-story is a story which focuses on one single thing, instead of elaborate many of them (398). It creates a “unity of impression” meaning that all elements of the story are combined together to leave a single feeling or effect on a reader (Matthews 398). The author stresses that the singularity (i.e. one place, one event, one character) in a short story is the main key that leads the reader to develop this unified impression (398).