Use Of Figurative Language In The Masque Of The Red Death

=In “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allen Poe, figurative language is used in
several ways to create a strange and eerie setting. The first description of the red death paints a
vivid and gruesome scene of what it can do to a person. Poe describes it as above any other
disease and says “No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avator and
its seal — the redness and the horror of blood” (Poe 1). The red death renders people stained
with blood that seeps out of their pores as they suffer from it, again creating a terrifying image of
the infection. There is also no way away from the red ded death, due to the fact that the setting in
which the disease is spreading is completely sealed off in a castellated abbey,

with the doors
welded shut: “This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and
massy hammers and welded the bolts shut” (1).
By creating an isolated setting like this, Poe eliminates the thought of ever getting away from the
red death, supporting the fact that death is inevitable. Another symbol referring to the impending
doom of any person in the abbey is the dark, black clock, ticking away the time each of those
people has left before their death. The large clock is also in the room that is completely black
with the clock, giving more emphasis on impending death. The death of Prince Prospero also
occurs in this room. Once his death occurs, the rest of the guests are next: “And one by one
dropped the revelers in blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing
posture of his fall” (4). The red death had come “like a thief in the night” (4), and brought death
to all. At the same time it also gained control of everything, becoming peerless and unstoppable
while leaving death in its wake. This is the last feeling Poe leaves the reader with, a sense of
helplessness towards the red death, knowing that nothing can stop it.