Logan Nabozney English 102-86 27 June 2024 The Masque of the Red Death A Masque of the Red Death is a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1850. The story follows a wealthy few who decide to throw a masquerade ball in a hidden abbey. This all happens amidst a pandemic known as ‘the red death’. Some of the symptoms of the red death include “sharp pains, sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.” (Poe). As a result, the wealthy run away to the abbey, which is a building with many rooms, often with a convoluted layout, used for religious purposes. The story has many instances of gothic architecture and scenery. Descriptions such as “The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.” (Poe). Closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries, ‘Closely Shrouded in Black Velvet’ evokes an image of a dark gothic room. The express mention of stained glass, large mechanical structures, and ebony colors greatly aids the author's attempt at gothic scenery. In many of Edgar Allen Poe's works, horror elements take front and center, often incorporating creepy and eerie elements. …show more content…
The author doesn’t pull any punches and describes each room in excessive detail. After reading the story, my brain was starting to ache trying to comprehend all the new and foreign words contained within. However, this adds to the style of the story as well. It helps the reader recreate the world that the author himself saw, allowing for more effective storytelling and overall
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.
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...
Madeline Kincer Mr. Thompson 1302-4200 March 12, 2015 The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe There is an exuberating, whimsical expression that comes throughout reading “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. The gothic imagery is personified and leaves an eerie chill down the readers’ spine. ” The Masque of the Red Death” is a short thriller about a plague terrorizing the country. The “Red Death” began by only killing the poor and weak members of society, the high class people were becoming concerned, so they attempted to hide from the Red Death.
The plague Edgar Allan Poe spoke of in his short story The Masque of the Red Death was one of complete and utter misery that defaced whomever it struck. While this pestilence was surging throughout the country mentioned in the story, a man by the name of Prince Prospero decided to attempt to cheat death out of its cold and icy grip. He along with a group of the most elite of the time closed themselves in one of the Prince's abbeys to try to wait out the death that lurked everywhere outside the castle walls.
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
Hundreds of people thought that they were being isolated from a deadly contagion, but it had seemed to find another form of an entrance. “The Masque of the Red Death”, was written by Edgar Allan Poe, a poet from the mid-1800’s, with a wife who had tuberculosis. The short story begins with a lengthy description of the pestilence, which can be interpreted as tuberculosis, that has infested the fictional country. The wealthy Prince Prospero decides to house a thousand of his friends, in order to keep them safe. The artistic home of this Prince has seven rooms, each decorated with a separate color. After five or six months of being sheltered from the contagion, Prince Prospero decides to throw a masquerade ball. As the party progresses, the large ebony clock in the black room chimes, on the twelfth chime, a new guest appears. The rooms turn silent as the ghost of the red death slowly walks through, the fearless Prince Prospero follows
Edgar Allen Poe wrote the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” in 1842. While only one character is actually named, Prince Prospero, the story builds apprehension just based on the descriptions and not on dialogue. The narrator is never named and it is a mystery as to this person’s involvement in the story. The ambiguousness of the narrator also helps build the drama throughout the story. “The Masque of the Red Death” tells the story of a group of wealthy people who are trying to ignore and separate themselves from a terrible disease that is sweeping across their country. The disease is swift and brutal and can cause death within 30 minutes. The people infected weep blood from the pores on their faces and bodies, which causes a disturbing visual image. Poe uses the setting and symbolism to reiterate to the reader that death is inevitable.
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).
“The Masque of the Red Death” is a story written by Edgar Alan Poe. He is a writer who centered his writing career on fiction and macabre stories (Digital). “The Masque of the Red Death” is one of those stories. Poe’s Romantic ideology uses the seven chambers as a symbol of death and evil to apply the Still Life “Vanitas” genre and use it as the focus not only for the setting of the story, but also to teach the reader how an individual with a power position can forget morality by getting attached to frivolous pleasures, and material possessions, resulting in wickedness. Poe also reminds the reader about the fragility of human’s life, by using the plague brought for the Red Death. Both death and evil bring devastation to people’s lives, and no one can escape to their force.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe has a gothic horror story setting. Gothic means that the author emphasizes the mysterious, the horrible, the ghostly and the fear that can be aroused in the reader. Everyone knows that a gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a desolate countryside. The mansion will be filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and corridors, in which people might be running and screaming in terror. The author uses every literary trick to give us an eerie sensation or to scare us if we hear an unexpected noise. The great descriptions of the mansion and the secret passageways are created for one reason and that is to give us a sense of the ghostly and the supernatural.
“The Masque of The Red Death”, is a wonderful illustrator of life, death, and small bits of joy in between. It uses good symbolism through the uses of a clock, seven rooms, the revelers, and a masked figure to represent the whole story. In the end, the story is a the embodiment of everyone's fear, death. The fear can come and of, but will one day seek it vengeance. It is as unavoidable as drinking water and breathing. Death is coming for us all and Edgar Allen Poe captured it
Edgar Allan Poe is considered as a very misunderstood writer. In his short story "The Masque of the Red Death" most critics are still not sure of the true meaning behind it. One such critic, Kermit Vanderbilt tries to relate Poe's story to The Tempest by William Shakespeare. He also writes about a month before "The Masque" was published, Poe looked at artists and their limitations by morality. Vanderbilt continues with his analysis by summarizing the story, focusing on the colors of the rooms in the abbey. It is suggested that Poe may have consciously paralleled his story and Shakespeare's The Tempest. He then goes on to explain the parallels in Poe and Shakespeare's works. Vanderbilt tries to show that Poe kept building on "The Masque" months after its publication with landscape in the story The Landscape Garden. Then Vanderbilt draws lines from Poe's "The Masque", The Landscape Garden and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Finally, the critic writes about Poe's feelings about the 19th Century and what he did with his works to create a sort of paradise.
First off, the setting of “The Masque of the Red Death” is quite eerie. The atmosphere throughout is creepy, foreboding and terrifying. Prince Prospero throws a party in his extremely secluded, fortified abbey, which is not only secure from outsiders but no one can leave either which is made
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them,” Antoine de Saint-Exupery said in a famous quote. “The machine”, whether an airplane, car, or something different, will never truly help man outrun or hide from problems. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe also paints this picture. A prince named Prospero and his closest friends desired to escape the disease called Red Death, which plagued the town around them. To accomplish this, the group hid out in an abbey, but soon discovered that they could never truly keep the disease out and ended up dying. Prince Prospero could have reached out to the dying people in the town possibly with a medicine which
Over the course of history, death has played a very integral part in literature, art, and human life in general. Portrayed by any in a very wide array of styles and techniques, one overarching theme that usually comes along with the use of death is the very simple, yet very existential one; “no man escapes death.” This theme is very apparent in the short story The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. The work is about a strange “plague” that has been overcoming the kingdom of a prince known as Prospero, a prince with a rather ironic and unfortunate name, whom rather than addressing the issue of this plague, decided to isolate himself in his kingdom and “escape” this death that