Edgar Allan Poe Distractions In The Masque

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Recommended: Symbolism the masque of the red death

uring the life of Edgar Allan Poe, he experienced loss continuously. While growing up he lost almost everyone he loved from tuberculosis. Some people speculate that this is the "read death" Poe writes of. Red death; the plague; tuberculosis; a bloody, plague. But really who knows? With fancy masquerade costumes to distract, brazen fires to enlighten, and the red death hiding amongst everyone, this could only be a symbol for life.

Who doesn’t like a brilliant distraction? They're all around us. Our phones, billboard ads, radio commercials you find yourself getting into, distractions are everywhere to hide us from things like politics, global warming, and even just life in and of itself. Poe uses many distractions in this story. Probably the main one that catches us is the use of the masquerade costumes. As it goes, "there were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm."(91) The present company must have been so distracted by the wonders of each other that they had almost completely forgotten the Red Death was waiting outside. They mindlessly went about dancing and admiring the galore. Fancying themselves with the music and “arabesque figures” they didn’t notice anything. …show more content…

Instead, Poe imagined great tripods, “brazier of fire” that rest behind the colored glass windows. In the beginning, the fires are all bright and burning, but like life they too burnt out leaving everyone in darkness to die from the Red Death that has seeped its way into the abbey. The “flames of the tripods expired,” like the lives of those once surrounded by the light. The fire symbolizes life by saying when a fire is first lit it is small, but as it burns on it becomes bigger and brighter, yet one false move or in this case the Red Death can snuff it out in a

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