Examples Of Allegory In The Masque Of The Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe’s, “Masque of the Red Death” narrates the story about Prince Prospero locking away his select of healthy nobles along with himself in an effort to merely avoid The Red Death that is spreading around his kingdom. The tale embarks with a third person point of view, but slowly transitions into first person, confusing readers on who this narrator could be. In “The Coy Reaper: Unmasque-ing the Red Death”, Cassuto claims that “The teller of the tale is Death himself.” but Dudley believes otherwise in “Dead or Alive: The Booby-Trapped Narrator of Poe's ‘Masque of the Red Death.’” when arguing that even though Cassuto gives a clever consideration for the narrator’s survival, the explicit symbol of death rejects the main theme of “death's

intolerably enigmatic nature.” Although there are several arguments presented on who this narrator could be, they both have plentiful evidence to show. Poe provides his purpose through allegory and personification to attempt to demonstrate the theme of “Masque of the Red Death”, which is inescapability of death and how it ultimately appears to reach everyone, by appointing a mysterious narrator, surpassingly identified as the Red Death, to tell the story.
Poe’s allegory in his work provides to the reader that death is inevitable, no matter the boundaries people cross in order to prevent it, and it will always come looking for us.

In the story, they all eventually die, which leads to the curiosity of how the narrator lived to share the tale. Cassuto agrees to this by stating, “The Red Death is indeed extraordinary, but so must be the narrator, for he has somehow lived to tell us about it.”. The survival of the narrator is yet another clue that leads readers to the conclusion of the narrator being the Red Death. In the beginning of the story, it is described how “the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” (Poe 10). This is shown to prove that the narrator must have been a witness that somehow survived in order to narrate. Cassuto gives his insight, stating, “The only one who "lives" is Death. The narrator must be Death

himself.”.
Dudley agrees with Cassuto for the most part, declaring that in order to narrate, he must be in the story.

He also articulates that the narrator must be a witness to events, similar to what Cassuto was expressing. However, he later claims that on the other hand, “the narrator is outside the story as a reporter of events. As a witness the narrator is contained by the story, while as a reporter he contains the story.” (Dudley 171). What he is striving to say is that he did not have to be a survivor in order to narrate, but instead could have been a bystander. Then he goes on to explain that as the witness, he’d be controlled by the story, since he saw the events take place. In contrast, as a reporter, he’d control the story, meaning he had the chance to conjure up images from his own mind since he did not experience the

events.
The abstract idea of Death cannot merely be a narrator, which is where Poe utilizes personification to cause it to function as a human. The Red Death is in quotations towards the beginning of the story, but eventually loses the quotes once it was exposed to the guests. This is a clear indication that as the story progresses, the Red Death slowly converts into something much bigger than a plague. It implies that he should be treated as a character of the story from that point on, considering he kills off the rest of them. The masquerade ball signifies that the Red Death had disguised himself along with the guests. He is masked to everyone, even the reader. “As Death remains masked to Prospero, so Death remains masked to us.” (Cassuto 320).
Dudley goes on to agree that the narrator merely cannot be your average human, “Therefore, whatever this narrator is, he is not a normal human being.”. Dudley describes the narrator as “anachronistic” meaning to be obsolete. What he is attempting to describe the narrator as someone who was not subordinate to time, meaning that time did not control him. Dudley briefly mentions what Cassuto states about the narrator being, “unique in the Poe canon”, agreeing for the most part with him that it cunningly reckons his argument. To sum up, in order to consider the narrator being Death, personification must also be considered.
In conclusion, Poe uses allegory and personification to furthermore disclose the Red Death as the narrator and to indicate his purpose of “Masque of the Red Death”. Although Prince Prospero attempted to lock himself away from Death with gates of iron and sturdy walls, it was too powerful to escape and in due course, the prince and the nobles died. No matter the extremes people go to in order to prevent death, everyone is eventually caught by Death.