Irony In Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

372 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: To helen edgar allan poe analysis

Poe’s child and she died so Poe made the poem about her. The character in “To Helen” is Jane Stith. Jane was like Poe’s second mother. Poe wrote “To Helen” in memory of her. The setting of “The City in the Sea” takes place in an old, deserted city about to sink in the sea. In “An Edgar Allan Poe Reader” several stories and poems are revealed but only a few will be considered. In the stories “The Black Cat” Poe writes irony in the story. This certain story is a first person narrative. The narrator shifts from a happy, animal loving, married man. One night the narrator gets drunk and believes that Pluto is not listening to him. So he takes the cat eyes out and hangs the cat. After the cat hanging he decides to kill the cat with an axe. But his wife would not allow it so he buried the axe in the brain. Poe says, “I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain”, (245). In the story “The Masque of the Red Death” the title slightly reveals the story. The story is about a fatal disease known as “The Red Death” and Prospero not caring about and dies. Poe writes this story in third person .Prince Prospero knew about the people dying from the disease but he paid it no attention. So one day Prospero decides to throw a masquerade ball. In the ball there are seven rooms. The seven rooms are different colors such as blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. While people are in enjoying the ball, midnight strikes and everyone silently fall to their deaths. Prospero see that everyone is dead and becomes frightened. Prospero runs in a rage and The Red Death catches him and Prospero dies.

Show More
Related

  • Edgar Allan Poe's Use of Suspense and Symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    Suspense is the feeling of uncertainty or excitement, in waiting for an outcome or decision. Edgar Allan Poe uses suspense in his story “Masque of the Red Death” by using objects and great descriptive detail. Poe’s story is about a prince that tries to escape from the inevitable. He tries to lock himself away from the ‘red death’ and has a masquerade ball that doesn’t end happily. Prince and all of his guests die inside or around the seventh apartment room. The seventh room is preceded by six colored rooms which are meant to symbolize either the stages of life, or the seven sins. Inside the last room there are black velvet tapestries that hang all over the ceiling and down the walls. The window panes are a deep blood red color which gives the room an unwelcoming atmosphere. On the western wall, there is a gigantic clock of a deep black wood. Inside it has a pendulum that swings back and forth with a dull monotonous clang. When the minute hand marks a new hour, there is a clear, loud, deep sound, which can be heard from far away. Although it can give off an eerie feeling, the great eb...

    Read More

  • Similarities In Edgar Allan Poe And The Masque Of The Red Death

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    Poe was a very experienced author of unique tales. He was born on January 19, 1809 and died on October 7, 1849. He had a dark life growing up because his mother, foster mother, and his wife died from tuberculous. His father abandoned him and his foster father disliked him. This background may have greatly influenced his work. He wrote 70 poems and 66 short stories during his lifetime. Poe has written many Gothic horror stories. “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” show these similarities.

    Read More

  • The Masque of the Red Death: Symbolism

    1428 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the "Masque of the Red Death," the first sentence, "The Red Death had long devastated the country," sets the tone for the whole story. Poe describes the horrors of the disease, stressing the redness of the blood and the scarlet stains. The disease kills so quickly that one can die within thirty minutes of being infected with the disease. To create a frightening effect of the revulsion of this disease, Poe uses words such as "devastated," "fatal," "horror of blood," and "sharp pains and profuse bleeding." In summary, the story relates the prince, trying to be safe and away from the horrible death, invites a thousand friends to be in seclusion in his abbey away from the disease. During a celebration , a masked ball at the abbey - with incredible described rooms and moods - a surprise masked intruder causes death to all.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death

    1690 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • How Did Poe Influence His Wife's Death

    415 Words  | 1 Pages

    First, in Poe’s life, his biological mom and his biological dad died of Tuberculosis when he was a kid. Later in his life, his foster mom also died from Tuberculosis. Then he went to live with his aunt and married his cousin virginia. In 1847, his wife Virginia then died of Tuberculosis. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, many people die of the Red Death, likely including people that Prince Prospero knew. This relates to the “The Masque of the Red Death” because both Poe and Prince Prospero knew people that died of a deadly epidemic. In addition, the symptoms of these two diseases are also similar. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, the symptoms of the red death include sharp pains, dizziness, bleeding from the pores, and most common symptom, blood stains on the victim’s bodies. Tuberculosis is also similar in symptoms because coughing a lot and coughing up blood are common symptoms. Therefore, this deadly epidemic affected Poe and his writing which caused him to write a story about an outbreak of a disease. In conclusion, the death of Poe’s wife, his gloomy childhood, and Tuberculosis influenced him to write the stories he

    Read More

  • Figurative Language In Poe's The Masque Of Red Death

    407 Words  | 1 Pages

    Poe also used his words kill as a magician to build the bloody imageries to make the audience feel reliable to his purpose. First he describe the terrible of Red Death, "There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the sympathy of his fellow men’’(Poe 43). It was a bloody scene , Poe portrayed the death scene horrorly to make the death in this story became more scary. Then Poe described Prince turn to died ‘’The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habilments of the grave...His vesture was dabed in blood and his broad brow, with all the features of the face was besprinkled with the scarlet horror’’( Poe 46). He performed the death of Prince is more horrible than everybody to get a strong conforment. Although The prince do everything to avoid the death but he still died. Not only sight, He was using hearing imagery too ”it's a pendulum swung and fro with a heavy monotonous clang; it came from the brazen lungs of the sound which was clear and loud

    Read More

  • Figurative Language In The Black Cat

    1772 Words  | 4 Pages

    Poe carefully details the most brutal scenes of his stories, a quality shared by many of his works. Within “The Black Cat,” three situations stand to illustrate Poe’s message: when the narrator stabs out Pluto’s eye, when the narrator hangs Pluto, and when the narrator murders his wife. Before the first violent act described in the story, the narrator is known to be a drunkard who abused his wife. No matter how despicable this may be, he is still a somewhat ordinary man. Nothing majorly sets him apart from any another, relating him to the common man. However, his affinity towards alcohol, led to “the fury of a demon” (2) that came over him as he “grasped the poor beast by the throat” (2) and proceeded to “cut one of its eyes from the socket.” (2) Poe’s gruesome description of the narrator as a destructive demon, one who was awakened by alcohol, connects his behavior to the common working-class man. Alcohol is a legal drug that can be obtained by many, and when consumed in excess leads to the uncontrollable madness that ensued. The descriptions of the act plants fear into the hearts of the readers, especially those who have consumed alcohol, of ever becoming such a

    Read More

  • Decoding Social Symbolism in Poe's Red Masque

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Masque of The Red Death is a famous short story written by Edgar Allen Poe which talks about a party happening in a large amount of different rooms that were all painted different colors. The main room as the title says would be the red room. Everyone was at the gala; you had your ballet dancers, your musicians, and your wine. The wine is most likely a reference to sophisticated men buying drinking expensive fine wine or cognac. You have the beauty; this references girls and goes into the stereotype of models and bottles at most galas, events and nightclubs. This was most likely a party where men went to meet women. Similar, to that of a large city nightclub like Lavo or Avenue in Manhattan. In the 1800’s there were no nightclubs, as we

    Read More

  • Language and Symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death

    417 Words  | 1 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death is an elaborate allegory that combines

    Read More

  • Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat

    668 Words  | 2 Pages

    Furthermore, Poe’s plot development added much of the effect of shocking insanity to “The Black Cat.” To dream up such an intricate plot of perverseness, alcoholism, murders, fire, revival, and punishment is quite amazing. This story has almost any plot element you can imagine a horror story containing. Who could have guessed, at the beginning of the story, that narrator had killed his wife? The course of events in “The Black Cat’s” plot is shockingly insane by itself! Moreover, the words in “The Black Cat” were precisely chosen to contribute to Poe’s effect of shocking insanity. As the narrator pens these he creates a splendidly morbid picture of the plot. Perfectly selected, sometimes rare, and often dark, his words create just the atmosphere that he desired in the story.

    Read More

  • What Is The Irony In The Masque Of The Red Death

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    We are born just to wait for death, as it awaits for us oh so patiently.Do you find it ironic? Life such a beautiful lie and death such a painful truth to the living. Within the story “The Mask of The Red Death” Edgar Allen Poe fills his story to the brim with symbolism explaining how escaping death is a pleasure none shall experience.A glass of wine never to be savored by the richest of men.No matter what percautions you take to avoid death he is waiting to put you in his collection.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe and the American Mind

    1861 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    The presence of the two cats in the tale allows the narrator to see himself for who he truly is. In the beginning the narrator explains that his “tenderness of heart made him the jest of his companions”. (251) He also speaks of his love for animals that has remained with him from childhood into manhood. However, Poe contradicts this description of the narrator when he seems to become annoyed with the cat that he claims to love so much. While under the influence of alcohol the narrator is “fancied that the cat avoided his presence”(250) and as a result decides to brutally attack the cat. This black cat symbolizes the cruelty received by slaves from whites. The narrator not only “deliberately cuts one of the cats eyes from the sockets” (250) but he also goes on to hang the cat. Once the narrator successfully hangs the cat the tale begins to take a very dark and gothic-like turn. The racism and guilt of the narrator continues to haunt him once he has killed the black cat. Th...

    Read More

  • The Black Cat Analysis

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.” (Womack). Poe uses many of the American Gothic characteristics such as emotional intensity, superstition, extremes in violence, the focus on a certain object and foreshadowing lead the reader through a series of events that are horrifying and grotesque. “The Black Cat is one of the most powerful of Poe’s stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust” (Quinn).

    Read More

  • Critical Interpretations of Poe's The Black Cat

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the staples of Poe's writing is the dramatic effect it has on the reader. Poe is known for his masterful use of grotesque, and often morbid, story lines and for his self-destructive characters and their ill-fated intentions. "The Black Cat" is no different from any of his other stories, and thus a Pragmatic/Rhetorial interpretation is obviously very fitting. If Pragmatic/Rhetorical criticism focuses on the effect of a work on its audience, then "The Black Cat" serves as a model for all other horror stories. One of the most intriguing aspects Poe introduces into the story is the black cat itself. The main character initially confesses a partiality toward domestic pets, especially his cat. Most readers can identify with an animal lover, even if they themselves are not. It is not long though before the reader learns of the disease that plagues the main character - alcoholism. Again, the reader can identify with this ailment, but it is hard to imagine that alcoholism could be responsible for the heinous actions made by the main character. In a drunken rage the main character cuts out one of the cat's eyes with a pen knife, and act at which he even shudders. Then, only after the cat's slow recovery from that attack, does the man hang the cat from the limb of a tree. ...

    Read More

More about Irony In Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

Open Document