Over the centuries Edgar Allan Poe has been named the father of the Gothic genre and has earned this title because of stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”. Each of these stories are unique in their own way, however “The Masque of the Red Death” is unique in the way that it has a lot of gruesome depictions as well as other graphic elements. Prominent Gothic elements that can be found in the story are gore, supernatural characters and events, and symbolism. As was previously said, Poe was known for his rather graphic depictions of death and gore and this story is a wonderful example of why. The way that the Red Death is depicted, the description of the rooms, and how Prince Prospero’s guests die all …show more content…
This element of the supernatural is also important to the story because it adds more detail and makes it stand out from everyday life. The supernatural is loved for its absurdity and the feeling of it being out of place, which gives the story more depth. The final element that was found in “The Masque of the Red Death” was symbolism. An example of symbolism found in the story is the depiction of the rooms. Each room is a different color and has all decor the same color to match the scheme of the room, being blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally black. These colors of the room are symbolic of the stages of life with blue being birth, purple being growth into childhood, green being youth, orange being adulthood, white being old age, violet being impending death, and black being death itself. They were all similar with the same decor, however the seventh room, black, was different as the windows were a scarlet
In The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe writes about how Prince Prospero holds a masque in a sealed abbey to try to forget about the Red Death. There are seven rooms in the abbey which have matching windows and decorations. A figure dressed as a deceased individual appears in the midst of the masque; Prince Prospero chases him to the scarlet room where he dies followed by everyone else. Edgar Allan Poe once said, “It is my design to render it manifest that no point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition…” Poe placed imagery and symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death to design meaning into the story. This statement is true at least for The Masque of the Red Death. Poe chose have the revelers die in the black and scarlet room and have the rooms go from east to west. It was his intention to use dream language when describing the masque.
In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery, sensory detail and symbolism not only to build suspense, but also to convey the idea that an individual can not hide or run away from death which becomes closer as time passes on. Throughout the story Poe uses imagery details to create suspense in the story. For example when the author is describing the disease that has taken many lives he describes the unfortunate event as, “ Blood was its Avator and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood. One can understand that in the story the tragic death of someone might occur as tragically as the disease is described. Accordingly, as the story progresses the deep shade of the color red is evident in many areas to represent symbolism.
The author, Edgar Allan Poe, using illusion or misdirection keeps the reader is suspense throughout this story called "The Masque of the Red Death". Symbolism such as the colored rooms, the impressive clock, the feeling of celebration being at a party all makes this story feel like a fairytale. Poe used this fairytale style and converts it into a nightmare in disguise.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death” Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. ED. Edgar V Roberts and Robert Zweig. Boston, Longman: 2012. 516-519.
In the short story “ The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to express ideas to develop his theme and characters. “ The Masque of the Red Death” tells a story of prince Prospero who locks his friends and himself in a castle to escape the Red Death, a deadly disease. Much to Prospero’s dismay, in the end, the deadly disease causes them to perish. Poe uses the dark room to reveal Prospero’s unusual character and reveal that death is always there and cannot be avoided.
"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.
During the time period of romanticism, literature usually contained grotesque and fantastical settings, plots, and characters. The short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” by Edgar Allen Poe resembles the qualities of romantic literature. Poe uses objects and settings to represent values of life and death. These representations add to the overall romantic theme of this story. Poe uses seven rooms of the main character, Prince Prospero’s, palace to represent stages in life. The last and seventh room represents death. This room “was shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls […] the panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color”(116). In this story Prince Prospero and his guests all die of the “red death” once they enter this room. The theme of this story is that no one can escape death. This is shown as Prince Prospero, a greedy and self-centered man, who tries to escape death, ironically dies as he enters the seventh room. Another element that is often found in romantic literature is the literary device, symbolism. Washington Irving, the author of the romantic folktale, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, uses symbolism to develop the plot and setting of his story. In this story, the setting is a dark and gloomy swamp with trees that symbolize lives that were once given to the devil, Old Scratch, in exchange for wealth. “Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and f...
In the story, “Masque of the Red Death” it covers six months during the Red Death.It takes place in a castle which has seven different colored rooms.In the beginning of the story it describes the main character prince Prospero as happy,fearless and wise. Towards the end of the story a new guest appears to the party and everyone is scared and Prospero goes from being happy to mad and in the end the new guest kills Prospero and everyone dies because he was the Red Death. The message in this analogy ,”The Masque of the Red Death “ by Poe is life passes by so quick that you don't realize what's going on until it's your time to die.
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...
“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.
There is an exuberating, whimsical expression that comes throughout reading “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan 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. While hiding in the midst of the Red Death’s terror, Prince Prospero throws a huge gala, much like a gothic version of a Jay Gatsby party from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great
When death begins it walk, it does not stop. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, A prince named Prospero, builds a castle to hide to the disease that devastated the country. He decides to have a masquerade and invites rich and wealthy guests to this castle so they can be safe from the Red Death. The music was magnificent, there was dancing; it was a spectacular ball that night until the clock stroked midnight and all eyes go on the uninvited guest. Poe uses the indolent Prince Prospero, glorious castle, and the eerie stranger to show that man cannot escape death in “The Masque of the Red Death”.
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.”
The story is not only about the horror of red death, but also the irony of the impossible effort of escaping death regardless of power, wealth, and social status. The plot of the story was effectively written with an excellent exposition that introduces metaphorical settings, historic characters, and extraordinary situations, creating such a strong effect on describing the horror of the read death. For example, the transition in color and decorations of the seven rooms symbolizes the stages of life and the contrary of the seventh room depicts the last stage of life which is death. Poe describes that ceiling and the walls in the seventh room are hung with black velvet tapestries falling in heavy folds upon the carpet with the same material and hue (“The Masque of the Red Death” 688). However, “in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color” (“The Masque of the Red Death” 688). This particular setting provokes such an unpleasant feeling toward the readers since the red color is often used as a conventional image or symbol which is associated with death.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for his masterful writing on all aspects of mortality, but his famous short story “The Masque of the Red Death” proves to be more than a simple story about death. While it is about death, Poe’s short story can be read and applied as a cautionary tale whose purpose is to illustrate a worthy way to live and die by portraying the opposite of both. This interpretation comes about when the story is viewed through the lens of New Criticism. This viewpoint shows how the story uses its formal elements converge to create one complex theme. Poe’s short story develops its theme through the use of paradox, tension, irony and ambiguity, all of which come together to identify