Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Edgar allan poe "masque of the red death" literary analysis
The writing style of Edgar Allan Poe
The masque of the red death literary analysis essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Philosophy of Composition is an 1846 essay written by E.A. Poe himself which elucidates a theory of how good writers write when they write well. By the end of the paper, Poe concludes that in order to achieve a strong piece of writing, you must achieve what he calls “unity of effect.” Poe analyzes this theory based on his famous piece The Raven. In general, unity of effect is when an author can completely submerge their reader into the work of fiction. This can be achieved through the means of tone, diction, the setting and even the amount and the way the author allows the reader to interact with the characters. One of the elements that Poe found crucial in achieving a certain mood was the ability to force the reader to be engulfed by …show more content…
Denouement as he called it, is the resolution of the plot, which is the element which should determine all else that happens within. Through this, short and concise essay, it will be argued and explored that Poe successfully achieves unity of effect in his horrifying short story The Masque of the Red Death. This is done, to rebut the many criticism Poe has revived on his essay The Philosophy of Composition based on that fact that he is biased in saying that his story achieves unity of effect himself. To often when reading short fiction, readers are to focused on identifying typical elements of literary analysis and their experience of a story becomes niched, leading to the entirety of the story being …show more content…
The tone that Poe achieves in The Masque of the Red Death is terror, alarm, and overall, horror. Poe wanted his reader to leave the piece not being able to stop thinking about it, to walk away with fear in their mind, bones, and heart. Poe achieves this through the words he uses and how he uses them. Poe’s structural style is very ridged, he does this in order to keep the flow of his writing very strong and smooth. In The Masque of the Red Death he makes each of his paragraphs about one topic, by doing this he is able to choose extremely specific language to coincide with each idea. The other aspect of Poe’s writing that assists in his success is the words he uses, or the colour of his writing. One cannot argue the fact that Poe does not have a sheer talent in the choosing of the words, not a single word is written that does not donate to the over atmosphere of the writing. Poe depends on the vividness and dramatic quality of each of the words he chooses. The way he describes the Red Death as “scarlet stains” which appeared upon the face of the victim to the “scarlet” window pane which illuminated the black of the seven coloured room. Poe’s explicit word choice adds to not only the success of his composition but also adds to the feeling of the
Edgar Allan Poe's writing style is based on the supernatural and the unknown. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero invites the revelers to come to the castle to party until the danger of pestilence is gone. The party was interrupted by an intruder who was dressed in all black (like the Grim Reaper) and was associated with the plague of the "red death." The reaper killed everyone one by one in the end. The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. An allegory is symbols that are presented in the story that have two levels of meaning. An example can be the clock in the story. The clock told time and represented the time they had left before they died. There were seven chambers that were different colors, and the last chamber was black, which was the last chamber that represented death. I think the seven rooms symbolized the days until you die and the clock symbolized the time until you died.
The Masque of the Red Death was very serious from the beginning to end. The story never pulled away from the sense of a looming threat. Poe did not waste anytime, he cut straight to the point and set the tone right away. The tone relates to people language and the specific words that he uses to create illusion and imagery. Poe uses different times of words to define his language which is called Old English today. Poe sentences are also short and they are practically identical in the simple structure. Poe is a very different writer than most writers today, he has a unique way about his language.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.
introduce and emphasize the notions of doubles and tangible abstractions without ever revealing the true identity of Wilson’s double. Finally, despite, culminating in the most direct and paramount manifestation of the abstraction of William Wilson’s conscience in the prank incident, the reader is still unaware of the story’s conclusion, but is well aware of the complications and notions that lead to the conclusion. In his book “Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style”, Brett Zimmerman details the critique of other authors that Poe’s style “in his Gothic tales, stylistic qualities [are] considered excessive, obnoxious … [and that] Poe’s ‘writing smells of the thesaurus’ and that his ‘vocabulary tends to be abstract’” However, this outwardly excessive
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
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.
...Plessis, Eric H. du. “Deliberate Chaos: Poe’s Use of Colors in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 34.1-2 (June-December 2001): p40-42. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 April 2012.
The world today can be a dangerous place, causing people to be precautions. To be a risk taker in today’s society involves courage and a willingness to be vulnerable. In the poem“Swimming alone,'; author Patricia Keeney uses diction and imagery to convey that venturing into risky situations requires one to be brave and yet desperate.
"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.
“The Masque of the Red Death” was written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 19th century. This story was written during the Gothic era. The stories that are written in the Gothic era is usually has to do with death, and lots of people were fascinated by the stories. There are many symbols in “The Masque of the Red Death”, yet I chose three, the first is all the colors of the room, second is the ebony clock and the last is the inside and outside of the abbey.
Poe uses major themes that are shown throughout the whole story in multiple different stories. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque Of the Red Death we see themes that appear largely in both stories such as time and versions of reality. In The Tell-Tale Heart we see three different perspectives of reality that basically can be three different stories that are told depending on the person who’s story you view from. In The Masque of the Red Death there are several different types of reality that range from the poor sick and dying of the kingdom that are locked out of the castle to the rich members of the kingdom who are in a dream like atmosphere and which even includes the prince 's version of reality as well where he believes he can simply just close the door on the disease. The realities in the story even range all the way to the reality of the the Red Death itself who does not see social classes or status but just goes after anyone for no reasons, but just cause chaos and suffering. The other theme also includes how time ties both of the stories together. In The Tell-Tale Heart the unnamed main character and narrator is completely obsessed with time. For several nights in a row he goes into the old man 's room precisely at the same time and and he does the same exact procedure every single night. He then after the murder he commits hears the heart of the dead man that resembles a ticking clock. Next, in The Masque of the Red Death we see time being represented in the orientation of the rooms from east to east, the colors of the rooms and what they represent of stages of life, and finally the clock in the black room that is counting down the time until the death of everyone at the party. Edgar Allen Poe writes his stories with similar themes , but finds a way to have the theme have a different representation in every story and how the
The first technique Poe uses in both stories is symbolism, which aids the reader in understanding the theme. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism to aid the reader in teaching the theme that death is inevitable. While explaining the setting, Poe describes a black room with red windows and then begins
Although William L. Howarth stated that the characters in Poe’s works are undeveloped and inadequate, I believe that Poe is able to transform parts of himself into characters ad interpret a deeper meaning into the actions and behaviors of these characters. These abilities are illustrated in most of his characters. However, they are the most obvious in characters such as Lady Madeline and Roderick in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Montresor and Fortunado in “The Cask of Amontillado,” and the raven in the famous poem, “The Raven.”
A virtuoso of suspense and horror, Edgar Allan Poe is known for his Gothic writing style. His style is created through his use of punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, tone, and figurative language. Punctuation-wise; dashes, exclamation marks, semicolons, and commas are a favorite of Poe. His sentences vary greatly; their structures are influenced by punctuation. Much of his word choice set the tone of his works. Figurative language colors his writings with description. Such is observed in the similarities between two of his most well-known short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”
D. H. Lawrence wrote an essay that extensively describes Edgar Allen Poe’s writing style. Lawrence looks at Poe’s work as a scientific and mechanical way of writing. The tales Poe writes are not really tales at all. The only reason they are even considered as tales is because they are a concatenation of cause and effect. Lawrence saw Edgar’s stories as more than just a tales. They are love stories. Poe does not write looking at the human part of someone’s life. The characters are looked at as inanimate objects with human qualities, rather than the characters being human with inorganic qualities.