In “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main characters foolishly try to control time for their own benefits, but they all fail and die in isolation. These stories reveal the vulnerability of humanity compared to nature. Prince Prospero, Miss Emily and Jay Gatsby desire to prevent the draining of time and try to make time stop at or return to a moment of happiness. However, all three characters are ignorant of their surroundings and hurt or disturb many people during the process. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal” compared to the Red Death, who kills half of Prince’s Prospero’s kingdom (Poe 1). Carelessly, Prince Prospero decides to leave …show more content…
the other half to die as well and please himself with a grand party with “a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court” (1). Fearing the Red Death, he locks his castle up and tries to hold a never-ending party to escape death. Prince Prospero attempts to make something that is meant to be momentary last forever, and he ignorantly leaves his fellow citizens desperate and helpless. Miss Emily also disrespects the passing of time and tries to make it freeze at a moment she embraces. Foolishly, she wants to achieve this by murdering Homer Barron, the man she loves. “The indentation of a head in the second pillow” and the “long strand of iron-grey hair” indicate that she spends time with the corpse each day like no time as passed (Faulkner 5). She kills him out of love, but her actions are unfair to him and go beyond hurting him. Miss Emily wants to make her love with Homer Barron last forever, but she commits an unforgiveable crime to him instead. Jay Gatsby, feeling unsatisfied with the moment, wants to bring back the past with Daisy. They use to be a joyful couple until Gatsby goes to war and Daisy marries another man. He confidently questions Nick in a conversation: “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can. He [Gatsby] looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby fails to realize that once time has passed, the future will no longer be the same as the past. His actions bother the people around him. He burdens Nick by dragging him into his unsolved problems with Daisy. Gatsby is supposed to let go of the past instead of proving that it can be repeated. Despite the three character’s effort to control time, none of them succeeds, and their lives all end in loneliness.
Prince Prospero fails to make his party never-ending and is killed by the Red Death. Throughout the story, there are strong indications that death is inevitable. The “gigantic clock of ebony” in the black room symbolizes the lost of time (Poe 2). Every strike of the clock represents one step closer to death. The moment of silence also foreshadows death because eventually after one of the strikes, the silence will last forever. Prince Prospero continues to let the party carry itself. The Red Death shows up at the masked ball and kills Prince Prospero and everyone else. Dying of the Red Death is isolating. “The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men” (1). No matter how grand and fancy Prince Prospero’s party is, the last moment of his life is still filled with loneliness and helplessness. His desperation is exaggerated in comparison to the populated party. His attempt to make his luxurious party last forever to escape death ends in total failure, and makes him experience a more painful death. Compare to Prince Prospero who only dies in loneliness, Miss Emily experiences isolation all her life. After she tries to stop time by killing Homer Barron, “her front door remained closed… for a period of six or sever years”, and she is almost completely cut off with the world except her occasional “lessons in china-painting” (Faulkner 4). From the age of forty, when Homer Barron dies, till her death at seventy-four, she spends most of her time in the house with the corpse. She eventually dies in loneliness. She does spend everyday with the person she loves, but it is nothing more than spending time with a portrait. Miss Emily fails to recognize what some things are not meant to last forever, in this case, love. Killing Homer Barron at a
time when he loves her does not carry that love on till infinity. “The body had apparently once lain in he attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him” (5). Jay Gatsby’s death is more desperate. The love that he is confident he has eventually leaves him and he is murdered during the most flourishing time of his life. Gatsby is determined to bring the past back, but in doing so he actually pushes Daisy away. Eagar to prove his love with Daisy, he forces Daisy to say, “she never loved you [Tom], she loves me [Gatsby]” (Fitzgerald 130). However, Daisy is disappointed and believes Gatsby is asking too much. Pressured by Gatsby, Daisy eventually chooses to stay with Tom instead of getting back with Gatsby. In the end Gatsby dies, and Daisy leaves him in loneliness. If he does not try to repeat the past but instead just create a new future with Daisy, they would be living happily. All three stories prove that men are powerless toward time, yet they still foolishly try to control it. This arrogance toward time and nature in general seems to be inherited in Americans. From the beginning, Americans have taken nature for granted. The explorers first valued America for its massive land and began exploiting it since. Americans act like the dominators of nature and treat nature as property, degrading its spiritual values (Meyer). In the end, nature always proves them wrong. Just as when Americans were celebrating the complete dominance of America after the closing of the frontier, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake hit, causing more than three thousand deaths and destroying the vast majority of the city. Prince Prospero, Miss Emily, and Jay Gatsby’s mindsets represent typical ones at the time.
Hutchinson and Prince Prospero. Both their deaths were at the hands of their own communities. Their own kin were a part of their demise. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (Poe 372). The whole village crowded around Mrs. Hutchinson and stoned her to death. This was just tradition, but Mrs. Hutchinson did not in the least expect that tradition would release its wrath upon her on that awful day. Prince Prospero had a similar experience with Red Death. “There was a sharp cry-and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero” (Poe 76). Red Death introduced himself to the prince by killing him instantly. This was completely unexpected for Prince Prospero as he thought that the guest was just a ruder intruder, not death. Prince Prospero and Mrs. Hutchinson were simply going about their days and enjoying themselves, they did not realize that it would be the last time that they would enjoy
He shows off his prosperity while ignoring the sick people of his land. Poe unmasked, “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."”(Poe 1). Prince Prospero shuns the Red Death without worries; he mistakenly believes his wealth will protect him from death itself. Unlike the Prince, Goodman Brown falsely assumes that his faith will protect him. The two characters rival in thought and inevitably both pay the price for
All people wish to avoid suffering, and those with wealth usually take too long to realize that they cannot avert it. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe tells the readers of death, and how the upper class deals with it. In this story, Prince Prospero and his wealthy friends hide away in a castle to evade death. This obviously does not work, as death is inevitable, but of course, they attempt to save themselves anyways. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the courtiers, Prince Prospero, and the stranger to symbolize the members of the influential upper class and their habit of using their power to postpone their own impending doom.
inevitability of death and the futility of trying to escape death. The prince's name, Prospero,
In the movie Peter Pan, Peter sprinkles fairy dust and flies away to Neverland. Neverland is an imaginary place very faraway.place. It’s where Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, the Lost Boys and other mythical creatures live. It’s considered a safe place for them. This flight represents escape and freedom by the Peter Pan, the children and all his friends being free from the real world. Being able to still hold onto their precious childhood. In a song by Ruth B. called Lost boy, she sings the line “He sprinkled me in pixie dust and told me to believe, Believe in him and believe in me. Together we will fly away in a cloud of green, To your beautiful destiny”. Peter Pan and his friends flies away to neverland to escape reality
“The worst cruelty that can be inflicted on a human being is isolation,” stated Sukarno. This quote indicates that isolation causes physical and emotional conflicts within and between people, and that it can have a brutal impact. The relationship between the themes of separation and isolation is cause and effect, because isolation is the effect of separation, yet isolation can cause separation as well. Both isolation and separation are able to provoke feelings of low self-esteem in a person, and this idea is expressed thoroughly by the novel, The Great Gatsby, and the poem, “(love song, with two goldfish)”. The authors produced main characters that had a sense of loneliness and depression as the stories progressed. They declared that separation
Firstly, The Masque of the Red Death is a short story that dwells on a wide variety of societal issues. On the other hand, The Raven adopts the form of a poem, which is especially notable for its dramatic and melodic properties. The poet uses the refrain of “Lenore” and “nevermore” in order to emphasize the narrators’ troubled interaction with death (Poe, The Works of Edgar Allen Poe). Furthermore, The Raven employs allusion in its attempt to explain the mysteries surrounding death. The poet seeks to know whether there is “balm in Gilead” in reference to the hope of life after death demonstrated in various religious faiths such as Christianity. In The Masque of the Red Death the author addresses death’s inevitability and its wider implication on the society (Poe). The short story addresses the ability of epidemics to wreck havoc on populations. Furthermore, the short story addresses the authority’s selfishness and incompetence when it comes to addressing pivotal issues affecting people. Instead of finding ways of protecting people from further infections, the prince selfishly runs away from the rest of the population. Whereas death finally catches up with everybody regardless of one’s social status, the short story plays a pivotal role in highlighting leadership discrepancies that plague many civilized
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick’s unreliability as a narrator is blatantly evident, as his view of Gatsby’s actions seems to arbitrarily shift between disapproval and approval. Nick is an unreliable and hypocritical narrator who disputes his own background information and subjectively depicts Gatsby as a benevolent and charismatic host while ignoring his flaws and immorality from illegal activities. He refuses to seriously contemplate Gatsby’s negative attributes because of their strong mutual friendship and he is blinded by an unrealized faith in Gatsby. Furthermore, his multitude of discrepancies damage his ethos appeal and contribute to his lack of dependability.
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.
Since the beginning of mankind, there is no doubt that society was broken down into millions of groups, otherwise known as social breakdown. Segregation, not only by skin color, and religion, but wealth as well, plays a vast part in the socially broken down society of the past and present. Likewise, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the environment as a whole is socially broken down economically. First and foremost, the two neighborhoods of East and West Egg play a central role in this division of wealth throughout the story, especially in comparison to Nick, the main character, and Mr. Gatsby, who lives next door to Nick. Also, the criticisms Nick faced of his small fortune are expressed several times throughout the story such as
“The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.” (page 389). Prince Prospero demanded the stranger to be seized and unmasked, however no one wanted to be the one to do it. Even Prince Prospero was too much of a coward to approach the stranger. The stranger or Red Death, ends of killing the Prince with his dagger and the others as well. Poe describes Red Death as “coming like a thief in the night”. None of us know the day or hour of our own death, but eventually we will all die.
Explore the presentation of loneliness and isolation in “The Great Gatsby”. In the course of your writing, make connections to “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”.
While The Great Gatsby is set in America in the 1920’s, it is a story that has been told thousands of times, in many different forms, and is as old as humanity itself. The story of a man climbing from rags to riches, only to find out that his wealth cannot buy him what he is truly searching for. These timeless stories are often dominated by great selfishness, and The Great Gatsby is no different. The book’s main character is Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man in New York with an unknown profession, well known for the lavish parties he throws each weekend at his mansion in the West Egg. The story’s narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to a small house next to Gatsby’s mansion in an effort to enter the bond business. Gatsby wants to get close to Daisy again,
While the Bergson’s represent an earlier time in America, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby transitions into the early 20th century of America. Representing the booming 20’s, which symbolizes the creativity and individualism of the “American Dream”. Right from the beginning of the story, narrator Nick Carraway begins to tell the audience of the advice his father had given him years ago in his vulnerable years “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” (pg,1) While it took Nick almost till the end of the book to establish this ideal for himself, he remains respectful and humble. Its interesting how this is said from the beginning of the story
Unlike in Young Goodman Brown, Prince Prospero’s journey is meant to warn him that attempting to avoid and ignore the evil within himself will lead to the suffering of himself and others. Prospero notices that the Red Death, a plague of evil, has overtaken his country, but instead of attempting to help, he separates himself from the sick by hiding in his home and trying to keep evil from entering:“A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts”(Poe, 1). Prospero goes to every length to keep out the Red Death, even if it means locking himself and his companions in. He uses strong metals to ensure that nothing breaks in, and by preventing anyone from leaving or entering, he separates the good from evil with uncrossable boundaries. Prospero becomes prideful of his apparent success at keeping away evil, and he decides to throw a party for the rich and healthy. In Prospero’s journey, he and his guests travel through a series of rooms that leads to their final destination, which in this case, is the end of their life. Throughout the journey, Prince Prospero and his guests are warned of this impending