Moby Dick and “The Masque of the Red Death”: True American Romanticism
In society today, people tend to go with their feelings instead of reasoning or recalling situations to have happened to them before for insight. The reasoning behind this is due American Romanticism, created in 1800 and lasting through 1860. In this period literature, music, and art was created on how the writers and artists felt instead of logic and reasoning. American Romanticism is clearly shown in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. Both Moby Dick and “The Masque of the Red Death” show the struggle of everyday life with vivid use of the five senses, the all-being truth of the cycle of nature, and the wonder, awe, and fear of supernatural beings.
Both works show in great detail choice words that appeal to our senses, helping us to understand the struggle of the people and the overall message in Moby Dick and “The Masque of the Red Death.” Moby Dick is a great example of this concept. The book gives striking detail in such great precision, which clearly explains the length of the piece. Just in the first chapter, detail is given about all the sailors around Manhattan Island. Melville writes:
“Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches...
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...ath in “The Masque of the Red Death”.
With sensory imagery to show an idea, cycle of nature, and the use of supernatural images to convey a message, both Moby Dick and “The Masque of the Red Death” are fine examples of American Romanticism. Both works use imagery stimulating the five senses to show and create emotion. The stories also teach a lesson from the cycle of nature, with the truth that death is inevitable is shown in Moby Dick and “The Masque of the Red Death.” Finally, Poe and Melville use supernatural elements to portray a message, with Moby Dick showing the general rage of humans while “The Masque of the Red Death” shows time ticking away.They use a combination of these 3 elements to provoke new ideas and put to use the reader’s imagination. As stated before, the use of feeling rather than logic in decision making is a result of the romantic movement.
Edgar Allan Poe was famous for his poems, short stories, motifs, themes, etc. After reading three of his most famous works: “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Raven,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” I found that the “Masque of the Red Death” was my personal favorite. In this story, Edgar Allan Poe enthralled the reader with his entire concept, symbols, and the way he infused history into the interesting and haunting story.
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
Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, "The Telltale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death" are two very different stories. One is about a simple man, perhaps a servant, who narrates the tale of how he kills his wealthy benefactor, and the other is about a prince who turns his back on his country while a plague known as The Red Death ravages his lands. Yet, there are some similarities in both. Time, for instance, and the stroke of midnight, seem to always herald the approach of impending death. Both are killers, one by his own hand, the other by neglecting his country. One seeks peace, the other seeks pleasure, but both are motivated by the selfish need to rid themselves of that which haunts them, even at the expense of another's life. However, the point of this critique will show that their meticulous plans to beat that which torments them are undone by a single flaw in their character - overconfidence.
Moby Dick is one of the greatest books written in American literature but when it was first made, Herman Melville was shamed for writing it and hated. After a while Moby Dick was noticed from being a book everyone hated to one of the most popular pieces of literature now. The title Moby Dick is known by almost everyone in America. Originally Moby Dick was called The Whale that was originally published in 1851 but was changed to Moby Dick in a later date. The book starts out with a very famous line called “call me ishmael” which was the name of the main character/narrator who goes out to sea as a merchant and wants to go on a whale adventure. Captain Ahab gathers his crew to hunt down Moby Dick even though they were supposed to go to get oil
Detachment from reality is what the main characters in both Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” express. “The Things They Carried” is the collection of interrelated short stories of Lieutenant Cross and his experiences throughout the Vietnam War. “The Masque of the Red Death” is the story of a prince who fears the “Red Death” who hides himself, along with some townspeople, to escape from the terrible disease. Each character, despite having two very different roles in their lives, have to face reality. In order to fully understand the relationship between these two works, each of these factors in turn.
Literature is often used to convey messages to their audience, through art, play or poetry. Whether it is intentional or not, an author can not help to include some aspect of the political events that happened during that time period. Two movements discussed in this essay are Enlightenment (17th – 18th Century) and Romanticism (18th – 19th Century) and through literature, we come to acknowledge the presence and representation of evil and how they shape society. Enlightenment thinkers value reason, rationality and moderation, whereas Romanticism encouraged imagination, emotion and individual sensibility. Tartuffe by Moliere demonstrates all of the Enlightenment values in his play, whereas Frankenstein by Mary Shelley emphasizes emotion, passion and the natural world. This essay will explore ways in which human reason and society can be evil and deceiving; although some individuals may think that evil is instilled in us from the day we were born.
"As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and from, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul." (p.463)
Death, despair, and revenge, these three words form a treacherous triangle to any reader who dare enter the mind of Edgar Allen Poe. In many of his works these expressions seem to form a reoccurring theme. Comparing the works "The Mask of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado", we will discuss these themes while analyzing the method behind Poe’s madness.
The deaths and dangers in the world we face are sometimes made of ourselves and of our fears. In the dark story The Masque of the Red Death the danger being unavoidable death that Prince Prospero shuns away but comes back to kill him. In Young Goodman Brown, the protagonist fears that his faith will be loss and nothing will be good in the world anymore. Both these stories are’ descriptive and use many symbols that connect to fear. While the protagonists in Young Goodman Brown and The Masque of the Red Death are both fearful, Goodman Brown fears of losing his innocence and runs off to find faith but loses it on the way, and the prince in The Masque of Red Death fears losing his riches.
Melville uses Moby Dick to challenge views on different opinions about Good vs Evil, Determination vs being content, Nature vs Humans. Moby Dick plays on both sides of each opinion and floats back and forth with his actions that make the audience use their own opinion as to which is true. There is endless symols held by the giant white whale.
Originating in Europe in the late 18th century, the Romanticism Era characterized an interest in nature and emphasized the individuals emotion and imagination. The sudden change in attitudes formed an age of classicism and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Praising imagination over reason, emotions over logic and intuition over science, this made way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. The variety of this impressive romanticism literature can be focused on by specific authors, works of literature, and how romanticism influenced their writing.
Brodhead, Richard H. "Trying All Things: An Introduction to Moby-Dick. New Essays on Moby-Dick or, The Whale. ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.
In the poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson and “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost, literary elements are used throughout both poems to get the message the authors are trying to portray. One main important literary element that is used to entice the reader, is symbolism, because it helps the authors describe something without actual describing it. Symbolism is also used because it shows how significant an object is. Characterization is also an important literary technique because it, gives the reader an idea on how the character would act, work, and their values in life. Death is a topic that is used in both poems. Also, every character express their opinion about death differently.
Abstract: There are many Analyst who would agree that the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the whale is just half of what the novel is really talking about. They would also agree that Melville employs some sort of spiritual read by simply by providing scriptures and rephrasing verses from the Bible into the text. But what is it really about? What made Melville come up with this idea style of writing Moby-Dick? Other analyst who also asked themselves this questions, probably looked deeper into the novel doing tons of research figured out a possible solution. The solution that Melville was influenced by Shakespeare novel ‘Hamlet’ this has been established because of the allusions Melville makes to Hamlet are countless. Moby-Dick may be a contemporary version of Hamlet. This paper will illustrate how the characters of Moby-Dick counterparts with the characters in Hamlet, expanding the reason why the character in one works with the other.